Climate-Resilient Water Management for Sub-Arctic Agriculture: Insights from Spatiotemporal modeling

Climate change, characterized by rising temperatures and increased weather extremes, poses risks to food security and water supply. Warmer temperatures allow northern regions to extend agricultural activities and cultivate alternative crops that necessitate longer growing seasons. However, the increase in hydrological extremes, such as droughts and heatwaves, poses a significant risk to agricultural productivity in northern Europe, especially in regions with no access to irrigation networks. This highlights the urgent need for implementing climate-resilient agricultural water management strategies such as controlled drainage and sub-irrigation, which offer potential benefits for productivity and nutrient runoff reduction. This study aims to assess hydrological deficits and excesses in the growing season across a sub-Arctic region by analyzing daily precipitation and evapotranspiration data. The model leverages gridded precipitation and evapotranspiration datasets with 1km resolution and crop coefficients to simulate daily water storage dynamics. Developing a computational model, we analyze the spatiotemporal pattern of maximum deficit and excess water from 1981 to 2023. Findings from the study provide valuable insights and a basis for calculating the water reservoir capacity to overcome the summer drought posed by climate change in agriculture. The model's results will be applied to developing flexible operation system support to manage (automate) tank-drainage systems during flash drought or heavy precipitation conditions.