Agricultural Microclimate and Irrigation Water Management

Dear Colleagues,

The atmosphere represents a critical compartment involved in a multitude of biophysical processes. Changing factors in microclimate, such as those derived from climate change, largely influence agricultural production and quality, crop water requirements, crop parameters, and soil water and nutrient dynamisms (e.g., evaporation, transpiration, and soil moisture retention). As a result of their influence on these processes, microclimate holds great potential for increasing the capacity of agro-ecosystems to sustain agricultural production and provide a buffer layer against climate change. Nevertheless, the monitoring and management of microclimate features at farm and watershed level is often not considered or not well understood.

This Special Issue calls for a wide range of original case and review studies focused on the influence of microclimate and agro-meteorology issues on the estimation of water-use efficiency and productivity in the main context of irrigation water management for sustainable agro-system production. The use of remote sensing techniques has a relevant role in this Special Issue. In particular, the following topics are very welcome:

• Studies evaluating the effects on the applications of sustainable practices in agriculture (e.g., water harvesting and precision irrigation strategies) multi-scale approaches, ranging from farm to watershed level;
• Studies for monitoring/modelling energy and mass fluxes and soil–plant–atmosphere (SPA) interactions using multi-data source approaches;
• Studies oriented towards improving the knowledge about biophysical processes within the SPA continuum for developing sustainable irrigation strategies;
• Research on the assessment of climate change effects on agricultural biophysical processes, as well as the evaluation of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies in the agricultural context.
• Studies focused on the development of agro-meteorological forecasts and their application for improving the accuracy of crop water requirement estimations and for knowing about the occurrence of extreme weather events in advance.

Dr. Daniela Vanella
Dr. Juan Miguel Ramírez-Cuesta
Guest Editors

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