From the field-scale Aquacrop model to a regional gridded crop model: initial evaluation over Europe

The pressure on soil and water resources to support the demand for crop production calls for effective water management at the regional scale and a need for regional crop models.

In our study, the field-based Aquacrop v.6.1 is modified to a gridded crop model that is run spatially over the main part of Europe at 1-km resolution.

The gridded model simulates spatially distributed soil moisture, crop biomass and yield, given spatial input of meteorological forcings extracted from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) and 1-km soil texture information from the Harmonized World Soil Database v1.2 (HWSD v1.2). For the first model evaluation, a hypothetical and uniform crop is implemented, and field management and irrigation practices are not included. We will present preliminary results over Europe by comparing the spatial soil moisture and biomass simulations with remote sensing data.

This work is part of the SHui project, a H2020 project that aims at improving stakeholder decision-making for water scarcity management in European and Chinese cropping systems.