Identifying irrigated areas using land surface temperature and hydrological modelling: application to the Rhine basin

Purnamasari, Devi; Teuling, Adriaan J.; Weerts, Albrecht H.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1483-2025

Articles | Volume 29, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1483-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1483-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 29, issue 6

Research article

|

19 Mar 2025

Research article |

| 19 Mar 2025

Identifying irrigated areas using land surface temperature and hydrological modelling: application to the Rhine basin

Devi Purnamasari, Adriaan J. Teuling, and Albrecht H. Weerts

Data sets

MODIS/Terra Land Surface Temperature/Emissivity Daily L3 Global 1km SIN Grid V061 Z. Wan https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD11A1.061

Shortwave radiation LSA-SAF https://datalsasaf.lsasvcs.ipma.pt/PRODUCTS/MSG/MDIDSSF/NETCDF/

Surface albedo LSA-SAF https://datalsasaf.lsasvcs.ipma.pt/PRODUCTS/MSG/MDAL/NETCDF/

Eurostat irrigation data Eurostat https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/EF_POIRRIG/default/table?lang=en

Model code and software

Code for processing dataset Devi Purnamasari https://doi.org/10.4121/66647538-ed17-4dd2-9af8-962ed0c61177.v2

Short summary

This paper introduces a method to identify irrigated areas by combining hydrology models with satellite temperature data. Our method was tested in the Rhine basin and aligns well with official statistics. It performs best in regions with large farms and less well in areas with small farms. Observed differences to existing data are influenced by data resolution and methods.