Assessment of the vineyard water footprint by using ancillary data and EEFlux satellite images. Examples in the Chilean central zone

Marcos Carrasco-Benavides; Samuel Ortega-Farías; Pilar M Gil; Daniel Knopp; Luis Morales-Salinas; L Octavio Lagos; Daniel de la Fuente; Rafael López-Olivari; Sigfredo Fuentes

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152452

Assessment of the vineyard water footprint by using ancillary data and EEFlux satellite images. Examples in the Chilean central zone

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Mar 10:811:152452. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152452. Epub 2021 Dec 18.

Authors

Marcos Carrasco-Benavides¹, Samuel Ortega-Farías², Pilar M Gil³, Daniel Knopp³, Luis Morales-Salinas⁴, L Octavio Lagos⁵, Daniel de la Fuente², Rafael López-Olivari⁶, Sigfredo Fuentes⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Agricultural Sciences, Universidad Católica del Maule, Curicó, Chile. Electronic address: mcarrascob@ucm.cl.
² Research and Extension Center for Irrigation and Agroclimatology (CITRA), University of Talca, Talca, Chile.
³ Department of Fruit Production and Oenology, Facultad de Agronomía e Ingeniería Forestal, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁴ Laboratory for Research in Environmental Sciences (LARES), Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile.
⁵ Centro de Recursos Hídricos para la Agricultura y la Minería, Universidad de Concepción, Chillán, Chile.
⁶ Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, INIA Carillanca, Temuco, Chile.
⁷ Digital Agriculture Food and Wine Group, School of Agriculture and Food, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.

PMID: 34933048
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152452

Abstract

The increase of vineyard's water consumption due to the Global Warming Phenomenon (GWP) has forced the winegrowers to strengthen their irrigation and water stewardship efforts, intended for maintaining this resource's long-term sustainable use. Due to water being a limited resource, implementing the Water Footprint (WF) concept in winegrapes production provides helpful information for sustainable water stewardship. Currently, an automated version of the satellite-based METRIC (Mapping Evapotranspiration with Internalized Calibration) model, the Google Earth Engine Evapotranspiration Flux (EEFlux) platform, has been suggested as an alternative to analyzing the spatial variability of an entire field's water consumption throughout the growing season. This work aimed to evaluate the potential application of the EEFlux satellite's actual evapotranspiration (ET_a) products and ancillary field data to obtain the WF blue (WF_b) and green (WF_g) of six commercial vineyards placed in the Chilean central zone. Firstly, the reliability of the daily actual evapotranspiration data from EEFlux (ET_{a EEFlux}) was assessed against measured ET_a data, using an available database from previous studies. The results of ET_{a EEFlux} estimations against measured ET_a were impressive, presenting a root square error (RMSE) of 0.8 mm day^-1. The satellite-derived crop coefficients (K_{c Sat}) allowed to estimate the total WF of each vineyard, in a range of 200 to 900 m³ t^-1, showing an average relative error (RE) of 101%, between the satellite-based WF_b (WF_{b Sat}) and those calculated from irrigation records (WF_b). These results reflected the particular conditions of each vineyard and can be considered reasonable since they were estimated from ancillary data and EEFlux products. This study provides new insights that may represent opportunities to sustainably managing the irrigation of vineyards.

Keywords: Global Warming phenomenon; Google Earth Engine; METRIC model; Vineyard evapotranspiration; Water sustainability.

MeSH terms

Chile
Farms
Reproducibility of Results
Water*

Substances

Water