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Agricultural valorisation of hill water reservoirs: The case of the Kamech hill reservoir (Tunisia) Volume 17, issue 3, Juillet-Août-Septembre 2006

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Authors
Institut national de recherche en génie rural, eaux et forêts (Engref), Laboratoire d’écologie et d’amélioration sylvo-pastorale, BP 10, Ariana Tunisie, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), Représentation IRD en Bolivie, IRD CP 9214, 00095 la Paz Bolivia, Institut national de la recherche agronomique (Inra), Unité de recherche « Environnement et Grandes Cultures », 78850 Thiverval-Grignon France

The aim of this study was to see how to optimize the management of the water resources in the hill reservoir of Kamech, a hill lake located in the humid area of semiarid Tunisia. Two approaches were adopted: i) a regional approach considering the climatic characteristics of the region – temperature, rainfall, reference evapotranspiration; and ii) an experimental local approach aiming at quantifying the actual evapotranspiration found in the tomato and wheat cultivated according to the farmers’ strategy. The results show that the two approaches differ in their assessment of the water requirements. Thus, the regional approach leads to water consumption needs higher than those recorded during the follow-up of the two crops. This confirms that the strategy adopted by the farmers puts the crops into restrictive water consumption conditions in spite of the fact that water resources are really close by and available. The two approaches have also shown how local characteristics are important for assessing the climatic demand and water requirements of the crops and how difficult it is to extrapolate the results to other areas. The water consumption estimates for the wheat and tomato highlighted the importance of the water deficit in both crops, thereby revealing that additional irrigation is needed for the wheat and that an adequate irrigation management system must be developed for tomato crops.