Uptake of uranium by callus cultures of two acacia species

Abstract EN

Gaza strip has an acute deficit in water both for domestic and agricultural use.

This deficit is related to water quantity and quality.

Agricultural sector is the main water consumer in the Gaza Strip with not less than 50 % of the total groundwater extraction.

Climate change has many effects on the hydrological cycle and thus, on water resources systems.

Therefore ; it is forecasted that the water deficit is likely to be exacerbated within the next years due to the consequence of the global warming and excessive use of irrigation water.

This study aimed to analyze the potential impact of the temperature and precipitation change and water salinity on the agricultural water demand for the chosen orchards that covers around 83 % of the orchards farms in Gaza Strip.

To achieve this goal, CropWat modeling software version 8.0, is used to calculate the crop water requirement under different temperature and precipitation scenarios.

Furthermore, a survey was conducted of random samples of farmers to evaluate their current irrigation practices and the impact of water quality on applied irrigation quantity as well as additional leaching requirements.

The study results showed that there was increase in the minimum temperatures by + 0.79 and + 0.94 °C in the last two decades, and there was an increase in the maximum temperatures by +0.29 and +0.26 °C in the same period.

The increased temperatures by + 1°C or +2 °C caused an increase of the annual average evapo-transpiration by 0.13 and 0.16 leading to increase of irrigation requirements by 3.30 % and 6.74 %, respectively.

Considering the increase of temperature + 2°C, and decrease of precipitation by 10 %, the irrigation requirements will be increased by 8.60 %.

In order to devoid the salinity effect, leaching requirements didn’t exceed 15 % in case of EC value less than 2 ds / cm, while it begins to increase rabidly after the EC value passed 3 ds / cm in the moderately sensitive orchards like grape, citrus and guava, and steadily increase in the tolerant orchards like olives and palm.

Generally, the impact of salinity increase on the irrigation requirements is much higher than the impact of climate change.

Farmers used irrigation network applying irrigation quantities more than others whom using traditional channel system; this fact returns to the low cost of operating irrigation with network comparing to traditional channel method.