Water Saving in the Semi-Arid Doukkala Irrigation Scheme (Western Morocco)

Investigations carried out under the MOSESH2020 project in the Doukkala irrigation scheme (western Morocco) allowed the generation of several data products during the agricultural seasons 2016-2017 and 2017-2018: Seasonal probabilistic weather forecast, Early-season and In-season crop mapping, Monitoring of crop water demand and Short-term forecasts of irrigation water requirements.

This study was focused on the assessment of the adequacy of the water applied to meet the crop water demand in the two irrigation seasons 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.

Monitoring of Crop Water Demand (CWD) was based on the estimation of the maximum crop evapotranspiration, obtained from remote sensing data of the monitored area. Such output is updated frequently (e.g. every week) during the irrigation season and compared to the weekly surface irrigation water volumes allocated. Although the assessment of adequacy of allocations against the crop water demand (CWD) showed that the latter was much larger with 10-15% than allocated surface water for the entire area, with this difference being small at the beginning of the growing season.

The use of MOSES products during the irrigation management operations would help the water management authority to save water, especially during the winter season, leaving additional water available to meet requirements in spring and summer.