Satellite remotely-sensed data for studying the impact of climate change on crop evapotranspiration in Cyprus

Recent studies have shown that climate change is likely to affect the agricultural sector in Cyprus. In the present study, crop water requirements in each of the 1995–2004 and 2010-2019 decades are estimated, by employing the same methodology, and subsequently compared. The aim is to investigate whether there has been any significant change regarding the crop water requirements of the most water-intensive crops in Cyprus. For the estimation of the crop evapotranspiration, the FAO Penman-Monteith methodology is used, as this has been adapted to satellite data. Remote-sensing data from Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI were employed.

Five water-intensive crops are in the focus of this research: citrus, bananas, colocasi, potatoes, and avocado. For each of these crops, estimations of the crop evapotranspiration were performed, considering three agricultural areas on the island where these crops are grown:  Pafos, Polis, and Famagusta.

The results have shown that there is no significant effect of climate variation on crop evapotranspiration, despite the fact that some climatic factors have exhibited a change on the island of Cyprus; the mean values for the most water-intensive trees/crops in Cyprus in the 1994–2004 decade have shown no significant difference from the mean values in the 2010–2019 decade, for all the crops and all agricultural areas. From the statistical analysis performed, it can be concluded that the climate change which has been documented in the past decades has not impacted significantly the crop evapotranspiration.

The authors would like to express their thanks to the Agricultural Research Institute for providing the proper resources for applying the specific methodology. Also, the authors acknowledge the ‘EXCELSIOR’: ERATOSTHENES: EΧcellence Research Centre for Earth Surveillance and Space-Based Monitoring of the Environment H2020 Widespread Teaming project (www.excelsior2020.eu). The ‘EXCELSIOR’ project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 857510, from the Government of the Republic of Cyprus through the Directorate General for the European Programmes, Coordination and Development and the Cyprus University of Technology.