Search
Search Results
-
Climatic water balance in Hamelmalo, Eritrea
69-76Views:159Agricultural production is an important sector for peoples to live, but it is highly affected by climate change. To have a good production we need to understand the climatic parameters which adversely affect production. Hamelmalo, which is located in the semi-arid area of Eritrea, is vulnerable to climate change and this is realised in the total production loss. Nevertheless, there is no concrete reference about the climate of the region due to lack of data for a long time. Changes in precipitation (P), evapotranspiration (ET) and, implicitly, in the climatic water balance (CWB), are imminent effects of climate change. However, changes in the CWB, as a response to changes in P and ET, have not yet been analysed thoroughly enough in many parts of the world, including Eritrea. This study also explores the changes of the CWB in the Hamelmalo region, based on a wide range of climatic data (P, relative air humidity and evaporation pan necessary for computing potential evapotranspiration (PET) with the pan evaporation method) recorded at Hamelmalo from 2015-2019. This analysis shows that the annual cumulative CWB for Hamelmalo is negative in 67% of the years. The dry season without precipitation leads to negative CWB and the change in CWB only starts from the raining or crop season. Based on this recent study, 2015 had the highest PET and lowest P, and this resulted in the lowest CWB in the investigated period. Opposite to this, 2019 had lower PET and highest P, which led to the highest CWB. However, the monthly values of CWB did not correlate with the annual P or ET. On the base of our study, it can be concluded that PET and P were very variable in the investigated years and P was the most influential elements of CWB.
-
Biomass production estimation of processing tomato using AquaCrop under different irrigation treatments
131-136Views:188The wiser usage of irrigation water is inevitable in the future. Irrigation has very high input cost; therefore, farmers must carry out irrigation with care. Also, the effect of irrigation on crops has a big role in decision making. Modeling provides a possibility to evaluate this effect. AquaCrop, as a crop production simulation model has great potential in this field. The accuracy of tomato biomass yield prediction of the model was tested in this research. For collecting the necessary data, a field experiment was conducted at Szarvas on processing tomato with different water supplies, such as 100% (I100), 75% (I75), 50% (I50) of potential evapotranspiration and a control with basic water supply (C). The relation of the simulation and actual biomass yields was evaluated during the season. Very good correlation was found between the modelled and the actually harvested data. The data for the control and I100 treatments showed higher correlation than the I75 and I50. The relationship for all of the data was moderately strong. Miscalculations occur mostly when the dry biomass yield reaches
7 t ha-1. The accuracy of the model was evaluated with the use of mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) values. The least error was found in the C treatment, which means 0.34 MAE and 0.45 t ha-1 RMSE. The simulation resulted in higher errors in the I75 and I50 treatments.