Submitted Abstract
The bloom of hazelnut industry and its extension to semi-arid regions in Australia and Chile is confronting adversity due to erratic and excess irrigation water application, and lack of water rights management to cope-up with recent droughts. Spatially-explicit information of hazelnut transpiration (ET), consumptive water use (CWU), and its response to water stress in the 30-70 km2 farm domain is the key missing element for establishing an efficient farm irrigation system to avoid excessive purchase of water which are major challenges for Agri Australis and Agri Chile, subsidiaries of the Luxembourgish partner of Ferrero Group (Ferrero Trading Lux S.A.). iMpULSE is the first unique collective science and business initiative to develop an innovative web-based geospatial analytics tool for mapping and monitoring of ET, CWU, and transpirational stress (STET) of hazelnut farms in order to enhance irrigation management in semi-arid climates. iMpULSE will use land surface temperature (LST) data from LANDSAT-8, MODIS, and Sentinel archives as an important boundary condition in conjunction with surface reflectance, and global meteorological and soil archives to deliver an accurate, operational and multiscale ET and water stress assessment service for hazelnut farms to facilitate water managers in Agri Australis and Agri Chile. It will employ a dedicated ET model and geostatistical (dis-)aggregation methods for generating and validating high and medium spatial resolution ET, CWU, and STET maps. Results will be compared with a baseline ET model which is commonly used for irrigation scheduling. By exploiting the synergies of multiple Earth observation sensors, climate and soil archives, the deliverables of iMpULSE will be a great value addition to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations on the water and food security, and efficient use of water for agriculture. iMpULSE will deliver innovative services and business opportunities for Luxembourg to make the agricultural sector smarter and to further position Luxembourg as a global innovation hub.