Nicaragua

Total area equipped for irrigation in Nicaragua equals 133 673 Manzanas or 94 240 ha [NI01]. The figures per province originate from the agricultural census in refer to year 2001. Most of the irrigation schemes are located in the western part of the country. The irrigated area per department is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Nicaragua irrigation areas in PDF or Nicaragua irrigation areas in Excel.

The irrigated area within the provinces was distributed based on a World Bank study on private irrigation from the year 1993 [NI02] and based on a CIAT map with irrigated rice [NI03]. The remaining area equipped for irrigation was equally distributed over area classified as “Agro-productive system” in the Central American Ecosystems Map [NI04].

No statistics on AAI or on the source of water for irrigation were available from the report of the agricultural census 2001. Therefore AAI was computed using the ratio between AAI and AEI reported for year 1998 [NI05]. The percentage of AEI irrigated using groundwater was derived from the same source. These statistics referred to year 1997.

References

[NI01]: INIDE. 2002. III Censo Nacional Agropecuario. Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo (INIDE), http://www.inide.gob.ni/cenagro/introduccion.htm, 25/08/2009.
[NI02]: World Bank. 1993. Central America - Subsector Study on private Irrigation. Vol. 2.
[NI03]: CIAT. 1997. Distribution of rice in Latin America. http://www.gis.ciat.cgiar.org or http://www.grida.no/prog/global/cgiar/.
[NI04]: World Bank and CCAD. 2001. Ecosystems of Central America (ArcView regional map files at 1:250,000). World Bank, Comisión Centroamericana de Ambiente y Desarrollo (CCAD), World Institute for Conservation and Environment (WICE), and the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), Washington, D.C., http://www.birdlist.org/ cam/themes/map_download_page.htm, 15/11/2010.
[NI05]: FAO. 2000. AQUASTAT country profile of Nicaragua, version 2000. FAO, Rome, Italy.