The EO-TIME Project: Earth Observation Technologies for Irrigation in Mediterranean Environments

The EO-TIME project (https://eotime.it/), funded by the ERANETMED program, addresses the efficient and sustainable use of water for food production in water-scarce environments by integrating Earth Observation, crop and soil water models and Information Technologies. EO data have already shown great potential in many irrigation pilot applications by recently EU-founded projects, providing key information to water managers such as maps of irrigated areas, maps of irrigation water requirements and evapotranspiration. The information on crop development and evapotranspiration can be used in conjunction with crop growth models such as AquaCrop by FAO, to estimate the water productivity. EO-TIME will implement and adapt existing tools in water-scarce conditions, by exploiting the full spectral capabilities of the Sentinel-2 platforms. Analyses will be carried out for distinct irrigation districts in Italy, Spain Lebanon and Jordan and results compared with ground measurements of delivered volumes for water accounting.