The Water Needs in Agricultural Sector in Tuscany (Italy)

The interdepartmental Centre of bioclimatology elaborated a method to estimate water needs related to the agricultural sector. This method considers and improves the previous methodology present in literature. Within the research, a software to quantify the regional water need has been also developed. This system acquires data from industrial civil and agriculture sectors and provides information about water resource in Tuscany. The application of the improved methodology permitted to quantify the water need in agriculture updated to 2008 at municipal districts of Tuscany. The total demand, estimated in 2008, resulted lower than in 2000. Pistoia, Grosseto, Arezzo e Siena were the provinces with more water request. The crops more diffuse in these territory included nursery gardening, maize and vegetables. Subsequently, a new methodology that took into account evapotranspiration and precipitation during the phenological phases of the crops was applied for maize culture, aiming to conduct a better evaluation of water needs. It was estimated that maize water requirement decreased respect to that calculated wwith the previous method. The analysis of the trend in the last year permit the diffusion of information useful to adopt a rational and sustainable management of water resources in Tuscany territory or to identify the critical period with more effectiveness. The developed software can quantify the water needs of different sector in every municipal district and provides data at different level of aggregation.