LIFE AGROWETLANDS II Smart water and soil salinity management in agrowetlands

The main aim of this project is to develop an innovative system for water and soil salinity management in agricultural wetland ecosystems. This system will integrate a soil water and salinity wireless sensor network (WSN) with a decision support system (DSS) in a web environment. It will: 1) Save irrigation water, maintaining agricultural productivity, minimize soil and water quality degradation by salinization and allow the sustainable development of agriculture, particularly in the surroundings of valuable wetland habitats; 2) Design and implement a WSN to control amount and salinity of irrigation and drainage waters, soil salinity and water content and water-table depth; 3) design and implement a web-based DSS that automatically scans the inputs from the sensor network to make irrigation recommendations; 4) demonstrate the application of this technology for integrated water and soil salinity management in Mediterranean agro-wetlands, to ensure crop productivity and wetland conservation; 5) Contribute to the European Soil Thematic Strategy against soil degradation (COM (2006) 231, 22.9.2006) 6) Contribute to EUSAIR Strategy (Pillar 3 Environmental Quality).