Paper Title
Remote Sensing And Evapotranspiration Mapping: Implications For The Upper Orange River Basin, South Africa - Part 3
Abstract
To sustain growing food demand and increasing standard of living, global water use increased by nearly 6 times during the last 100 years and continues to grow. As water demands get closer and closer to the water availability in many regions, each drop of water becomes increasingly valuable and water must be managed more efficiently and intensively. However, soaring water use worsens water scarcity condition already prevalent in semi-arid and arid regions, increasing uncertainty for sustainable food production and economic development. Planning for future development and investments requires that we prepare water projections for the future. However, estimations are complicated because the future of world�s waters will be influenced by a combination of environmental, social, economic, and political factors, and there is only limited knowledge and data available about freshwater resources and how they are being used.Based on the differences in consumptive water use, different land use land cover change scenarios were evaluated with regard to savings of crop water. It is found that such analyses need to be complemented at more fine spatial resolutions (i.e. irrigation subdivisions).