Monitoring water use in agriculture through satellite remote sensing. Read the article in "The Future of Water"
In 2050, food needs to be produced for an expected population of between 9 and 10 billion people.
A lot of water is needed to produce food.
Irrigated agriculture, as it is practiced today, is responsible for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals in the world. Not all of this water is actually used by the crops. A large part of this water, in traditional systems often more 50% is not evaporated by the plants and flows back to rivers or groundwater. This water can be used again by water users downstream.
How to monitor the performance of water?
A careful monitoring of water productivity in agriculture, that is the amount of crop which can be produced by using a certain amount of water, is required to increase water productivity. But how can we monitor the performance of water use in agriculture? How can we increase water productivity in the future to make sure we grow more crop per drop?