Climate change impacts

In arid areas like California, irrigation is indispensable for farming. However, there are concerns that climate change may increase the risk of droughts and changes in rainfall patterns; therefore, appropriate irrigation is necessary to ensure sustainable agricultural production.

 

Adaptation activity

Farmers need to consider the timing and extent of irrigation. To help with this, irrigation forecasting systems called CIMIS (California Irrigation Management Information System), are provided by the State of California (Fig. 1). In this system, weather data collected by different observation stations are automatically collated and stored on a database server and is analyzed by a central computer. Users can access weather data via the Internet (Fig. 2).

 

Outputs / Expected benefits

CIMIS knowledge is expected to help farmers determine when and how much irrigation is appropriate for their needs.