Algerri-Balaguer irrigation district, Spain

The animation shows the Algerri-Balaguer irrigation district, in the Ebro River basin, in Spain. The background image was acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 3 August 2020 and the blue slate shows what is categorised as permanently irrigated land by the Corine Land Cover 2018 dataset.

Irrigation practices are scarcely monitored worldwide, which is somewhat paradoxical since this is how we predominantly interfere directly with the water cycle. However, satellites measuring our planet from space offer unique opportunities to answer the question of how much water is used for irrigation?

A paper published recently in the journal Earth System Science Data reports on the results of ESA’s Science for Society Irrigation+ project, which aims to show how irrigation can be measured from space.

Read full story: How much water do we use for irrigation?