Water Footprint and Crop Water Usage of Oil Palm (Eleasis guineensis) in Central Kalimantan: Environmental Sustainability Indicators for Different Crop Age and Soil Conditions

Abstract

Various issues related to oil palm production, such as biodiversity, drought, water scarcity, and water and soil resource exploitation, have become major challenges for environmental sustainability. The water footprint method indicates that the quantity of water used by plants to produce one biomass product could become a parameter to assess the environmental sustainability for a plantation. The objective of this study is to calculate the water footprint of oil palm on a temporal scale based on root water uptake with a specific climate condition under different crop age and soil type conditions, as a means to assess environmental sustainability. The research was conducted in Pundu village, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The methodology adopted in carrying out this study consisted of monitoring soil moisture, rainfall, and the water table, and estimating reference evapotranspiration (ETo), root water uptake, and the oil palm water footprint. Based on the study, it was shown that the oil palm water usage in the observation area varies with different crop ages and soil types from 3.07–3.73 mm/day, with the highest contribution of oil palm water usage was in the first root zone which correlates to the root density distribution. The total water footprint values obtained were between 0.56 and 1.14 m3/kg for various plant ages and soil types. This study also found that the source of green water from rainfall on the upper oil palm root zone delivers the highest contribution to oil palm root water uptake than the blue water from groundwater on the bottom layer root zone.

Water requirement of oil palm in two different edaphoclimatic conditions in Brazil

“…Differences between our results and some of those reported by the literature may be associated to different soil types, depth of the root systems and soil hydraulic properties (Campos et al, 2017;Safitri et al, 2019). In addition to that, some errors may occur in K cbrfbased water balance due to the difficulty in obtaining cloud-free images in regions where oil palm is cultivated (Ng et al, 2012), as exhibited in Fig.…”

“…Nelson et al (2006) carried out a study with oil palm in Papua New Guinea and reported an ET a value of 4.1 mm d -1 in an 8-year oil palm plantation. Safitri et al (2019) registered average daily ET a rates of 3.07 mm d -1 (K c =0.68) and 3.51 mm d -1 (K c =0.7) by a seven and 8-year-old oil palm stand in spodosol, respectively. Antonini et al (2015) reported ET a between 4.1 and 5.7 mm d -1 (K c =1.1) in irrigated 7-year-old oil palm trees under the Brazilian Tropical Savanna during the driest period of the year.…”

“…ET o is the main factor used to determine the ET c based on the rate of transpiration in the area and it is an important variable in the hydrologic cycle (Xu et al 2006, Safitri et al 2019). The multi-year average ET o calculated by using Penman-Monteith equation in this study was the same daily ET o rate (4.0 mm d -1 ) registered by Safitri et al (2019) in the tropical rainforest zone in Indonesia and in accordance to the average value of ET o for tropical humid zones, which ranges between 3.0 and 5.0 mm d -1 .…”

“…According to Campos et al (2013), water stress is capable of reducing potential evapotranspiration up to 20%, especially during the dry season. In addition, oil palm trees are known for their ability to absorb relatively large amounts of soil from the water (Safitri et al, 2019), and the distribution of the root system, as well as the dynamics of rainfall in the region, can contribute to the frequency of water stress. In this study, we observed that ET a rates declined mainly during the less rainy period of the years.…”

“…3.6B, SAVI does not vary even when LAI values exceed 3. Some authors reported that the most of root water uptake is near to the soil surface, where soil moisture is provided by the rainfall, while in the deeper layers it can be from the rainwater with deep percolation or the capillary from groundwater (Nelson et al 2006;Safitri et al 2019). Despite the average high rainfall in state of Pará, the seasonality of precipitation may promotes water stress during the dry season, causing the ET a rates to be higher in dry or humid seasons depending on the intensity of dry period, vegetation type, and depth of water table (Costa et al, 2010;Vourlitis et al, 2011;Lathuilliere et al, 2012;Harper et al, 2014).…”