Catchment-scale challenges for water resources management: assessing ‘reasonable’ peak needs for irrigated agriculture in a humid climate

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dc.contributor.authorKnox, Jerry W.
dc.contributor.authorWeatherhead, E. Keith
dc.date.accessioned2024-03-18T15:28:58Z
dc.date.available2024-03-18T15:28:58Z
dc.date.issued2024-02-27
dc.description.abstractRising demands and competition for water resources within all sectors are placing increasing pressure on the environment. Almost all direct abstractions in England require a licence (permit) from the regulatory authority, the Environment Agency. Assessing and setting ‘reasonable’ peak quantities of water that can be legally abstracted in an environmentally sustainable manner is central to the whole licence determination process. To protect environmental flows and other abstractors within each catchment, the regulatory authority needs to be able to set sensible limits in the licence conditions, including total seasonal volumes and peak rates of water use, particularly for abstractions from hydrologically sensitive surface water sources. This paper describes the development of a methodology to assess the ‘reasonable’ peak rates of water use for agricultural irrigation in support of catchment water resources management and planning. A daily time step water balance model was used to simulate peak monthly and daily water requirements for irrigation using long-term historical weather records for agroclimatically contrasting sites. The model-simulated outputs were then compared against observed data from selected case study farms, and against data reported in a national water abstraction database. Guidelines were then developed for setting peak monthly, daily, hourly, and absolute abstraction rates for irrigation, taking into account the environmental sensitivity of different types of water source. The application of the procedure and its relevance in other countries where catchment water resources are under intense pressure from agriculture are described.en_UK
dc.identifier.citationKnox JW, Weatherhead K. (2024) Catchment-scale challenges for water resources management: assessing ‘reasonable’ peak needs for irrigated agriculture in a humid climate. Hydrology, Volume 11, Issue 3, February 2024, Article number 33en_UK
dc.identifier.issn2306-5338
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology11030033
dc.identifier.urihttps://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/21027
dc.language.isoen_UKen_UK
dc.publisherMDPIen_UK
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/*
dc.subjectallocationen_UK
dc.subjectabstractionen_UK
dc.subjectdemanden_UK
dc.subjectirrigationen_UK
dc.subjectwater resourcesen_UK
dc.titleCatchment-scale challenges for water resources management: assessing ‘reasonable’ peak needs for irrigated agriculture in a humid climateen_UK
dc.typeArticleen_UK
dcterms.dateAccepted2024-02-23

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