Remote Sensing for Irrigation Water Use Control: The Case of the Benalup Aquifer (Spain)

In recent years, the Copernicus programme developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) has enabled to improve our knowledge on the functioning of hydrological systems and water management. The added value of Copernicus lies in its open access and adequate time–space resolution that in combination with other datasets on land use, climate or hydrology makes it a powerful tool to monitor irrigated areas, assess irrigation performance or identify illegal abstractions. The present work is focused on the exploitation of the Benalup aquifer, which is located in the Barbate River Basin (Southern Spain) and has been declared as in poor quantitative and qualitative status by the Public Administration. The use of remote sensing techniques has allowed to identify the time–space distribution of irrigation in agricultural plots supplied with groundwater, the only available hydric resource in the area. The results obtained reveal a marked seasonality in the existing crops and a mismatch between the irrigated plots that have been identified by remote sensing techniques and those with irrigation license. This study evidences the potential of remote sensing for promoting a sustainable water use through the identification of illegal groundwater pumping that is of major importance in a context of climate change.