Anne M. JOCHUM (1),(2), Alfonso CALERA BELMONTE (2) and Andrés CUESTA GARCÍA (2)
(1) ALFAclima; Avenida de España, 9, 6ºD; E-02002 Albacete, Spain.
(2) Grupo de Teledetección y SIG.(IDR). Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. E-02071 Albacete, Spain.
Irrigation Advisory Services (IAS) are the natural management instruments to achieve a better efficiency in the use of water for irrigation. IAS help farmers to apply water according to the actual crop water requirements and thus, to optimize production and cost-effectiveness. The project DEMETER (DEMonstration of Earth observation Technologies in Routine irrigation advisory services) aims at assessing and demonstrating how the performance and cost-effectiveness of IAS is substantially improved by the incorporation of Earth observation (EO) techniques and Information Society Technology (IT) into their day-to-day operations. EO allows for efficiently monitoring crop water requirements of each field in extended areas. The incorporation of IT in the generation and distribution of information makes that information easily available to IAS and to its associated farmers (the end-users) in a personalized way. This paper describes the methodology and first results.