Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Irrigation Water Requirements under Mediterranean Conditions—A Review of the Methodological Approaches Focusing on Maize Crop

Abstract

Climate change is a challenging fact influencing diverse sectors in society including the agricultural one, which is heavily dependent on natural resources and climate. In the Mediterranean region, climate change-related increases in air temperature, and in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as droughts, boost the pressure on the agricultural systems and affect crop yield potential. The growth of the world population implies that production needs to increase in a sustainable manner. Therefore, this study focuses on the maize crop due to its importance for food security and because it is a crop with significant water consumption that occupies a large worldwide area. In order to study climate change impacts on crop production, plant water requirements, and provide farmers guidelines helping them to adapt, it is necessary to simultaneously evaluate a large number of factors. For this reason, modelling tools are normally used to measure the future impact of climate change on crop yield by using historical and future climate data. This review focuses on climate change impacts on maize crop irrigation requirements and compares—by means of critical analysis—existing approaches that allow for the building a set of mitigation and adaptation measures throughout the study of climate.