Geographia Technica, Vol 13, Issue no. 2/2018, pp. 97-113
PROJECTION OF ANNUAL CROP COEFFICIENTS IN ITALY BASED ON CLIMATE MODELS AND LAND COVER DATA
Mărgărit-Mircea NISTOR
ABSTRACT: Nowadays, a multitude of world changes are coming to affect the ecosystems, urban landscapes, and natural resources. Land use and land cover patterns represent an interactive layer between Earth surface and underground entities which is often consider in the hydrogeological studies. Many factors such as climate parameters and human activities affects the groundwater recharge, quality of water resources and also changes in the hydrologic regime. Crop evapotranspiration plays an essential role in the water balance and water deficit investigations. Here, we use the seasonal crop coefficients to calibrate the annual crop coefficients for the Italian territory. These values could be useful for the temperate zone area. Four stages of annual crop coefficients were set (initial, mid-season, end season, cold season) to perform the calculation of annual crop coefficients. The annual crop coefficients (AKc) have been extracted from the annual ETc. CORINE land cover data and high resolution climate models of potential evapotranspiration (ET0) were the key datasets for AKc projection in Italy. These findings and original maps that we show in the paper represent important tools for the agriculture, environmental, and urban planning.
Keywords: land cover, seasons, crop coefficients, crop evapotranspiration, land cover projections, Italy.
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