Assessment of Agricultural Water Footprint in Taiwan – A Case Study of Rice Production
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Chang, Yuan-Hsin
Abstract
Water supply has become more and more unstable owing to the severe global climate change. As the result, water resource and management are the most important issues nowadays. Water footprint is regarded as an indicator of consumptive water use and could also reflect the impacts caused by pollution emission from irrigation process. Moreover, this indicator could demonstrate water requirement. For crops, the water footprint is calculated within entire growth period and consists of three components: the blue water footprint (consumptive use of irrigation water), the green water footprint (consumptive use of rainwater stored in soil) and the grey water footprint (volume of polluted water associated with the application of fertilizers). Since rice production has always been the major consumption of irrigation water in Taiwan, this study estimated the amount required for rice production and discussed the water footprint difference among different crop seasons and regions.
The water footprint from producing 1 ton of rice in Taiwan from 1980 to 2009 is about 5938 m3 with 4784 m3/ton (80.6%) of blue water footprint, 904 m3/ton (15.2%) of green water footprint, and 251 m3/ton (4.2%) of grey water footprint. To see the difference among different crop seasons, the water footprint for the first crop season is 4754 m3/ton, and the water footprint for the second crop season is 7122 m3/ton. The inconsistence is majorly caused by the weather, production rate, and fallow during the growth of crops. For regional water footprint, the southern region has the less water footprint (4139 m3/ton) and the northern region has the highest water footprint (7302 m3/ton). The result above could offer useful information for agriculture policy and water resource management.
Water footprint is able to offer information about the temporal and spatial allocation of water resource and then improve the water consumption efficiency. With the public and accessible water supply data, the government could conduct better management and could determine more integral policies.
Subjects
water footprint
rice
irrigation.
Type
thesis
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