Diversification from field to landscape to adapt Mediterranean rainfed agriculture to water scarcity in climate change context

Molénat, Jérôme; Barkaoui, Karim; Benyoussef, Salah; Mekki, Insaf; Zitouna, Rim; Jacob, Frédéric

doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101336

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 52 publications

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“…Indeed, it is possible to improve rainfed agricultural productivity by implementing strategies that (1) reduce crop water needs, with species suited to drought conditions, or (2) increase water availability in the root zone by favouring runoff/rainwater in ltration or minimising evaporative losses. The amount of water that in ltrates the root zone can be increased using water harvesting techniques (e.g., planting pits, terraces) at different spatial scales from the plot to the landscape (Yadari et al 2019;Tadros et al 2021;Molénat et al 2023). These techniques are suitable for landscapes with hilly topography that allows for the spatial redistribution of surface runoff (Ammar et al 2016; Mekki et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of hydrological connectivity on rainfed annual crops in Mediterranean hilly landscapes: a numerical exploration

Dhouib,

Molénat,

Prévot

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Within hilly agricultural landscapes, topography induces lateral transfers of runoff water, so-called interplot hydrological connectivity. Runoff water generated in upstream plots can infiltrate downstream plots, thus influencing the water content in the root zone that drives crop functioning. As the impact of runoff on crop functioning in the context of Mediterranean rainfed annual crops has been understudied thus far, the current study aims to comprehensively investigate this effect. To quantify how the downstream infiltration of upstream runoff affects crop functioning, we conduct a numerical experiment using the AquaCrop crop model and consider two hydrologically connected plots. The experiment explores a range of upstream and downstream agro-pedo-climatic conditions: crop type, soil texture and depth, climate forcing, and the area of the upstream plot. The experiment relies on data collected over the last 25 years within the Kamech catchment, an environment research observatory in northeastern Tunisia. Overall, the results show that the downstream infiltration of upstream runoff has a positive impact on crop functioning in a moderate number of situations, ranging from 16% (wheat) to 33% (faba bean) as the average across aboveground biomass and yield. This positive impact is mostly found for soils with higher available water capacity and under semiarid and dry subhumid climate conditions, with a significant impact of rainfall intra-annual distribution in relation to crop phenology. These results need to be deepened by considering both a wider range of crops and future climate conditions, for which larger occurrences of semiarid climate conditions are expected.

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