Russian Federation

AEI was 6 124 000 ha in year 1990 and declined to 5 158 000 ha in year 1994 [RU01] and 2 375 100 ha in year 2006 [RU02]. Area equipped for irrigation for the 87 provinces of the Russian Federation was derived from the report of the agricultural census 2006 [RU02]. The irrigated area per province estimated that way is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Russian Federation irrigation areas in PDF or Russian Federation irrigation areas in Excel.

The irrigated areas and arable land were derived from a land-use map [RU03] and from an agricultural map [RU04], both provided by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. In the Asian and more northern parts of Russia, only a few areas are classified as irrigated. Therefore, irrigated areas were also distributed to other agricultural areas using the priorities as documented in Table 1. Irrigated area was first distributed only to cells with a priority of 7, then to cells with a priority of 6, and so on until the sum of the distributed irrigated area was equal to the irrigated area of the specific region as derived from the statistics.

Area actually irrigated was 4 095 000 ha in year 1994 [RU01] but declined to 938 900 ha in year 2006 [RU02]. Consequently, agricultural water use was 15.3 km3 yr-1 in 1994 [RU01], but only 8.8 km3 yr-1 in year 2006 [RU05]. The dramatic restructuring of the irrigation sector results in serious difficulties to estimate the percentage of AEI irrigated with groundwater. In 1990, most of the land under irrigation was commanded by reservoirs and open canals conveyed the water to the irrigation schemes. However, it was also reported, that projects planned for the period 1998-2003 were mostly based on extraction of groundwater for irrigation [RU01]. According to another report the percentage of surface water use is 90 percent for industrial water use, 92% for domestic water use but only 64 percent for agricultural water use [RU06]. Based on these statistics and considering the ongoing transformation of the irrigation sector area equipped for irrigation with groundwater was estimated at 20 percent of total AEI.

References

[RU01]: FAO. 2012. AQUASTAT country profile of the Russian Federation. FAO, Rome, Italy.
[RU02]: Federal State Statistics Service. 2008a. Results of all-Russia agricultural census 2006. Vol. III: Soil resources. Federal State Statistics Service, Moscow, Russia, 311 pp. (in Russian).
[RU03]: Stolbovoi, V. & McCallum, I. 2002. Land resources of Russia. Map ‘Land Use’. Version 1.1. CD-ROM. Laxenburg, Austria, IIASA, http://www.iiasa.ac.at, 29/07/2004.
[RU04]: Stolbovoi, V. & McCallum, I. 2002. Land resources of Russia. Map ‘Agriculture’. Version 1.1. CD-ROM. Laxenburg, Austria, IIASA, http://www.iiasa.ac.at, 29/07/2004.
[RU05]: Federal State Statistics Service. 2008b. Environment protection in Russia, 2008. Federal State Statistics Service, Moscow, Russia, 253 pp. (in Russian).
[RU06]: Kireycheva, L.V., Glazunova, I.V. & Belova, I.V. 2006. Country report from Russia. In: Dirksen, W. and Huppert, W. (ed.). Irrigation sector reform in Central and Eastern European countries. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany, 463-524.