Water User Association “Volturno Inferiore” (Caserta)
Description of pilot area
The study areas of the Water User Association “Volturno Inferiore” (Consorzio Generale di Bonifica del Bacino Inferiore del Volturno) is located in Campania and it is divided into three irrigation districts for a total of 13,289 hectares: Parete, Mazzafarro, and Santa Maria la Fossa (Figure 1a). The area of Parete has an extension of 7,937 hectares for three sub-districts called “A” (high), “M” (medium), and “B” (low). The Mazzafarro (MAZ) district covers an area of 2,805 hectares, while that of Santa Maria la Fossa (SMF) covers an area of 2,547 hectares. The main crops are maize, tomato, alfalfa, tobacco, fruit trees, and greenhouse crops such as vegetables and strawberries. The most common irrigation method for herbaceous crops is sprinkling, while localized irrigation prevails for trees. The irrigation season extends from April to October.
The detection of the actual irrigated areas has been performed by using a time-series of NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) maps and rainfall data as input data in a supervised classification process.
“Sinistra Ofanto” Irrigation Scheme (Apulia Region)
Description of pilot area
The study area is the sector 6 of Irrigation District 10 in the Sinistra Ofanto irrigation scheme, located in the Apulia region (province of Foggia). The Sinistra Ofanto irrigation scheme is bound in the south by the Ofanto river and in the south east by the town of Cerignola as shown in figure 1 and it covers an area of 22,500 ha. It was designed and constructed for pressurized on-demand delivery schedule and it is currently managed and operated by the Consortium of Capitanata, a local water users’ organization.
The most important species grown in sector 6 are vineyards, peaches and cereals. Figure 2 shows the cultivated area and relative spatial distribution for the year 2019 (data were obtained from CBC).
The estimation of crop irrigation requirements has been performed by using the data of LAI, fc and albedo for each irrigation unit, per day. An example of the spatial distribution of the satellite-based CWR map for July 2nd 2019 is shown in figure 3 (Er-Rami et al., 2021).
