BowAT

Forecasts on the development of yield security in Austrian agriculture paint a bleak picture for the coming decades. For areas without irrigation, yield declines of over 50% of current yields are predicted in some cases.

Brief description

Soil water is already often the limiting factor for agricultural yields on Austria's highly productive arable soils. The systematic recording of the soil water balance is therefore essential for far-sighted statements on agricultural yield conditions and the risks of reduced supply security due to drought, the short and medium-term development of groundwater resources or for flood forecasts through better defined pre-wetness scenarios.

The Austrian Hydrography Department, based at the BML, has been operating a monitoring network to record the soil water balance since the end of the 1990s. This has been continuously expanded over time, so that - due to further technical developments - it is currently available in various technological stages of expansion. To ensure the comparability of the results from these BWH measuring stations, it is necessary to establish a standardized procedure for data evaluation. The BowAT project will develop such a routine. The processed BWH data will then be implemented in a soil water balance and plant growth simulation model. Based on this, approaches for the regionalization of the results will be tested in order to be able to draw conclusions from the selective BWH measurements to area-wide, regional evaluations of the BWH status and subsequently to the plant yield and the food and supply security.

In a further project phase, a proposal for the equipment and communication technology integration of a future-proof BWH measuring station will be drawn up on the basis of a supply analysis and many years of measuring experience. The aim is to promote the long-term, cost-efficient operation of the monitoring network. The results of the calculations in the project can subsequently also form the basis for the daily derivation of area-based BWH information, which is of significant importance for agricultural operators, administration and research. Reliable information on the prevailing soil water content enables, for example, irrigation recommendations, an assessment of the intensity of dry periods and estimates of groundwater recharge.

Additional information