VASILONI et al. (2025) Assessing the Impact of Irrigation Practices on Soil Moisture and Crop Health Using Remote Sensing and Hydrological Modelling

Identification

• Journal: Research Journal of Agricultural Science
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-12-19
• Authors: Angel VASILONI, R. PAȘCALĂU, Răzvan GUI BACHNER, L., ȘMULEAC 0000-0003-3901-5691, Adrian Şmuleac
• DOI: 10.59463/rjas.2025.4.48

Research Groups

• University of Life Sciences “King Mihai I” from Timisoara, Romania (Departments involved in Agricultural Science, Soil Science, and Geomatics).

Short Summary

This study develops an integrated framework combining Sentinel-1/2 remote sensing with the SWAT hydrological model to assess irrigation efficiency. The findings reveal that drip irrigation achieves 25% water savings and 15-20% higher crop vigor compared to traditional flood irrigation.

Objective

• To quantify the spatial and temporal impacts of different irrigation practices (drip, sprinkler, and flood) on soil moisture dynamics and crop health using a coupled remote sensing-hydrological modelling approach.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: 500 km² agricultural district (Timisoara region, Romania), featuring diverse irrigation systems and dominant crops of maize and wheat.
• Temporal Scale: Two consecutive growing seasons (2022–2023).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) for hydrological water balance; SWAT-CUP for multi-objective calibration; Water Cloud Model (WCM) for vegetation-corrected soil moisture retrieval.
• Data sources:
  • Satellite: Sentinel-1 C-SAR (10 m resolution, 6-day revisit) and Sentinel-2 MSI (10–20 m resolution, 5-day revisit).
  • Ground Observation: Time-Domain Reflectometry (TDR) sensors at depths of 0.05 m, 0.2 m, and 0.4 m; Leaf Area Index (LAI) and plant height measurements.
  • Ancillary: Digital Elevation Models (DEM), soil maps, and meteorological data (precipitation, temperature, solar radiation).

Main Results

• Irrigation Efficiency: Drip irrigation maintained stable soil moisture (Coefficient of Variation = 15%) with 25% less water consumption than flood irrigation.
• Crop Health: NDVI values were 15–20% higher in drip-irrigated fields during critical growth stages, indicating superior crop vigor and uniformity.
• Water Balance: Flood irrigation resulted in 30% water loss via deep percolation and surface runoff, whereas drip irrigation losses were below 10%.
• Water Use Efficiency (WUE): Drip irrigation recorded the highest WUE (2.8 kg/m³), followed by sprinkler (2.1 kg/m³) and flood irrigation (1.5 kg/m³).
• Model Validation: Strong correlation between simulated and observed soil moisture (R² = 0.89) and streamflow (Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency = 0.78).
• Inefficiency Identification: Spatial analysis identified that 35% of flood-irrigated areas suffered from either moisture stress or waterlogging due to topographic variations.

Contributions

• Methodological Integration: Successfully couples SAR-based soil moisture and multispectral vegetation indices as spatial constraints for the SWAT model, overcoming the limitations of point-based observations.
• Precision Diagnostics: Provides a scalable methodology to map sub-field level water stress and waterlogging, transitioning irrigation management from uniform application to precision diagnostics.
• Comparative Analysis: Offers quantitative evidence of the hydrological and agronomic superiority of drip systems over traditional methods in a regional context.

Funding

• Research supported by the University of Life Sciences “King Mihai I” from Timisoara. (No specific project codes or external grant references were provided in the source text).

Citation

@article{VASILONI2025Assessing,
  author = {VASILONI, Angel and PAȘCALĂU, R. and BACHNER, Răzvan GUI and L. and 0000-0003-3901-5691, ȘMULEAC and Şmuleac, Adrian},
  title = {Assessing the Impact of Irrigation Practices on Soil Moisture and Crop Health Using Remote Sensing and Hydrological Modelling},
  journal = {Research Journal of Agricultural Science},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.59463/rjas.2025.4.48},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.59463/rjas.2025.4.48}
}

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