The development of the irrigation requirement in the dry regions of the Czech Republic with reference to possible climatic change

• Main Authors: Pavel Spitz, Ivo Hemerka
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mendel University Press 2006-01-01
• Series: Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis
• Subjects: climatic change; agricultural drought; irrigation water requirement; method of retrospective moisture balance; regression analysis
• Online Access: https://acta.mendelu.cz/54/2/0171/

The supposed climatic change in the Czech republic has be expressed with an increased occurence of unfavourable extreme phenomenons – floods and drought. This paper is dedicated to the agricultural drought. Irrigation is the most effective protection of crops against drought. The paper presents results of the calculations of the irrigation water requirements (for sprinkler irrigation) with the method of retrospective moisture balance (RVB) for representatives of main sorts of crops, i.e. cereals, technical crops, root-crops, fodder crops, vegetables (concretely perennial wheat, sugar-beet, new petatoes, alfaalfa, cucumbers) in the semiarid regions of the Czech republic (Southern Moravia, South-East Moravia, Middle Moravia, Žatecko and Lounsko, Litoměřicko, Middle Bohemia and Easter Bohemia) represented with 10 technical series (see tab. II) for recent years 1961 – 2000 and to the time horizons of years 2025, 2050 and 2075 with respect to a possible climatic change. The input meteorological data changes (average daily temperatures, daily precipitations and average daily air humidity) for calculations of irrigation water requirements to the introduced time horizons were realized by the help of the outputs of the scenarios for Bohemia and Moravia ascertained with the model of a climatic change HadCM3 (Hadley Centre Coupled Model, version 3). The results of the calculations for an average and a drought year (in tab. III) were the base for the determination of development trends of an irrigation water requirement for choosen crops to the year time horizons 2000, 2025, 2050, 2075. These trends were generally analysed for the all monitored semiarid regions of Bohemia and Moravia by means of regression straight lines (an example is shown in fig. 2). The results gained by means of the regress analysis are in tab. IV. They reflect the fact that the irrigation water requirement has an advancing development trend at all of chosen crops for an average and a dry year with an increase in a future time horizon. Simultaneously it is evident that values of the irrigation water requirements are in an average and a drought year for semiarid areas in Moravia, excepting insignificant exemptions, mostly bigger than these values for semiarid areas in Bohemia. The obtained results show, if irrigation will be expanded in the Czech republic, it´s necessary, by taking into an account all the time more accurate informations concerning the climatic change, to dedicate the permanent attention to the irrigation water requirements in semiarid areas of the Czech Republic, not only for separate crops but also for the whole cropping structures. The knowledge of the irrigation water requirements is an important base above all for the assesment of irrigation areas and the size of irrigation water resources.