engleski

Advanced techniques in soil survaying in the Mediterranean karst stony terraces

Karst landscapes are widespread along the Mediterranean area, including Croatian Adriatic coast and islands. Rural area in this region, however, faces a lack of arable land. Therefore, in the last two decades more than 5000 ha of karst stony terraces and steep slopes have been remediate by stone crushing to make the land suitable for agricultural production, mostly for grapevine and olive production. After the deforestation, new grapevine and olive trees plantations are made particularly on the slopes exposed to sun and sheltered from strong winds. The program of spatial and temporal variability of soil and crop monitoring and assessment based on the integration of air- and ground-based sensors of different types and sensor data fusion was established in Sibenik, Croatian Adriatic coast were grapevine and olive trees are grown on such soil. The region benefits from Mediterranean climate with worm to hot, dry summers and frequent winds, conditions that favor organic p roduction. Average annual precipitation of the area ranged from 557 mm to 1200 mm being quite evenly distributed over the year, and the driest from May to September. Excessively dry topsoil of stony and gravelly soils causes water run-off and thus significant evaporative loss of water. The lack of moisture was identified as an important risk indicator in grape vine and olive production. For rational use of water for irrigation, water status in plants was assessed by soil water measuring and the use of physiological indicators. Water measuring in skeletal soils is especially challenging because of the very coarse nature that pose soil contact problems for some of the available soil moisture monitoring devices, and because of great within-filed variability. The maps obtained by integration of airborne thermal imagery and leaf water potential measurement are efficiently used in assessing the spatial variability of water stress across the plantations.

Karst landscapes; precipitation; grape vine; olive production; irrigatrion; airborne thermal imagery; leaf water potential

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