Hydro-informatics for Sustainable Water Management in Agrosystems

The growing global population and the increasing water demand intensify the competition for water between agriculture and urban areas and increase transboundary tensions regarding water resources. This has led to widespread discussion and consensus on the urgent need for sustainability-oriented water management practices in agriculture. These practices aim to reduce, avoid or redress environmental impacts and lessen the anticipated intense competition for water. A variety of state-of-the-art approaches, including “precision irrigation” and “integrated water management” promote transitions to sustainable practices. A common denominator to these approaches is that technological, social, and institutional innovations around agricultural water resources planning and management at different scales are instrumental for major sustainable transformations in agricultural water management. Hydroinformatics approaches, based on, for example, water crop modelling, machine learning for irrigation management, deterministic modelling and real-time measurements have been used nowadays in order to achieve the cited above.

A large number of Hydroinformatics applications in agricultural water management have been successfully implemented in areas of the world, where water scarcity is most acute and poses constraints on economic development and water management. This Research Topic aims to address global issues on the application of Hydroinformatics for Agricultural Water Management with a focus on technological innovations.

The potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Hydroinformatics as a state-of-the-art approach to agricultural water management;
• Field-scale to regional-scale management of agricultural water-resources,
• Approaches to integrated agricultural water management;
• Real-time measurements and/or data management techniques in agricultural water management;
• The environmental effects of agricultural water use and management
• Precision irrigation;
• Modelling water cycle in agrosystems;