Assessing climate change impacts on an irrigation scheme by hydrological modelling

The aim of this work is to evaluate the effects of climate change on the water balance of a maize crop in an irrigation districtof Southern Italy ("Destra Sele", Campania Region, 22.645 ha). Two climate scenarios were considered, "past" (1961-1990)and "future" (2021-2050), the latter constructed applying statistical downscaling to GCMs scenarios. For each climate scenarioand for each soil unit (25 units in the whole area), an indicator of the soil water regimes (crop water stress index CWSI) wascalculated by means of the hydrological model SWAP, applying different irrigation strategies. The soil hydraulic propertieswere derived by means of tested and validated pedo-transfer functions (PTF; HYPRES). Crop-specific input data and modelparameters were derived from local field experiments where the SWAP model was calibrated and validated. The results showan increase of CWSI in the future climate scenario, with some spatial patterns strongly influenced by the soils characteristics.