Most countries have specific systems for measuring the consumption of fresh water in homes and issuing bills accordingly, but the issue is completely different when we talk about agriculture, which is the largest consumer of fresh water in the world, as there is no system to control the consumption of irrigation water. The majority of farmers rely on groundwater pumping and use as desired, and the only bill that is paid may be the cost of the fuel needed to operate the pumps.
In view of the depletion of groundwater, and future concerns related to food and water security, there is an urgent need to find a precise system for controlling agricultural irrigation water, and to give groundwater enough time to regenerate underground. For example, the kingdom's reserves of groundwater, dating back to the last ice age, are currently being used up faster than nature can replenish them. This prompted the expert in remote sensing technology at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Professor Matthew McCabe to search for innovative solutions to the global water crisis, by developing a system for measuring and determining the amount of groundwater used in agriculture.
McCabe thinks we should think of our water use in agriculture as something like a bank account. And given our unaccounted consumption of groundwater, the problem is deeper because it puts our food security at stake.”
McCabe believes that drone technology may be the key to solving this problem. He reached this conclusion during his work at the Hydrology and Ground Observation Laboratory (Halo) at KAUST, where he conducts research in the areas of mapping agricultural areas, determining the type and health of crops grown, and their rate of irrigation water consumption.
To determine the features and topography of the area to be surveyed, McCabe and his team use various imaging techniques and equipment such as drones, as well as the use of satellites, as the drone is equipped with thermal cameras and sensors that can monitor, for example, the chlorophyll content and water stress of the plant, and the team also uses images from satellites Small, fruit-box-sized artificial cubes called CubeSats are made by the American company Planet. Thus, the team has the necessary ingredients to analyze images of agricultural lands with high accuracy and clarity, up to 3 meters per pixel per day.
Obtaining images of agricultural land is just the beginning, as the real work lies in analyzing and interpreting the data of these images, and here comes the role and expertise of the Hydrology and Ground Observation Laboratory at KAUST, where McCabe and his team use machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify and describe specific agricultural fields, and come out With results measured in terabytes and petabytes, some of this data was published in a 2019 research paper, in the form of an unprecedented high-resolution analysis of water consumption data for an agricultural field using images captured from space.
It is noteworthy that most governments in the world do not keep such data, but most countries do not have accurate information about the actual number of agricultural fields in them, and therefore the amount of water used by these fields. McCabe says: "Unfortunately, groundwater is not paid as much attention as we find in a commodity such as oil, especially since there are many alternatives to oil, but there is no single alternative to water."
Food security
Early in the study, McCabe's team estimated the amount of water used in agriculture to produce crops in the kingdom at a rate of 24 billion cubic meters annually, a whopping number equivalent to more than 10 times the amount of fresh water the country produces using costly desalination.
McCabe explains that his team's efforts are focused on drawing maps and identifying agricultural fields in the Kingdom. We now have a sophisticated mechanism for estimating the amount of groundwater consumed in agriculture, which did not exist before, with accuracy and clarity not found in any other country.
McCabe and his team at KAUST are working with the Saudi government to estimate water consumption in local agricultural operations, but in the future he hopes to apply his model to cover all regions of the world, effectively contributing to global food security. "If a certain price is set on water in agriculture, and its consumption is monitored from space using the techniques developed at KAUST, this will enhance water conservation efforts," says McCabe.
The problem of food security is a cross-border problem, even for non-agricultural countries such as the Kingdom, which imports about 90% of all its food. Therefore, it is fully concerned with the extent of threats to groundwater resources in other countries, especially agricultural ones. McCabe says: "The data of the food security platform should not be limited to what is happening in your region only, but must include all parts of the world, especially food-exporting countries, because you do not have the ability to control and manage what you cannot measure."
Okaz (Jeddah) @okaz_online