A modelling framework to estimate the impact of rewetting projects on agricultural activities in Flanders

The Flemish coalition agreement 2019-2024 places a strong emphasis on increasing our resilience to drought, including through the active use of resilient zones with (extra) nature to mitigate the effects of climate change. Neighboring agricultural activities can experience positive effects by buffering water in the landscape. However, too shallow groundwater levels can have consequences for the workability of the land and the crop growth itself. This means that farmers and policy-makers do not only need to adapt to an increased occurrence of droughts, but probably also to the impacts of excessive soil water. Therefore, the project PEILIMPACT developed and applied model instruments, adapted to the Flemish conditions, to determine the impact of rising groundwater levels on the yield of common agricultural crops. The model SWAP-WOFOST, part of Water Vision Agriculture as developed for the Netherlands, was used for this purpose together with open data layers available in Flanders.

(Citation: Estrella, D., Mulder, M., De Swaef, T., Bartholomeus, R., and Garré, S.: A modelling framework to estimate the impact of rewetting projects on agricultural activities in Flanders , EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-16387, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-16387, 2023)