The effects of regional water management practices (WMPs) on the soil salinity of a representative rice field under Mediterranean conditions (Thessaloniki plain, Greece) were investigated. The temporal variation of soil salinity parameters in the soil solution and in the exchangeable phase was monitored at and below the root zone (15–20 and 35–40 cm) during the growing season. The comparative analysis (ANOVA for p = 0.05) of the measurements before and after the growing season showed that: (a) for the soil solution of the 15–20 cm layer, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, K⁺, HCO₃⁻ and EC were significantly reduced, Na⁺ remained constant and Cl⁻ increased, while in the 35–40 cm layer no significant differences were detected to all parameters except for Cl⁻ which was increased; (b) for the exchangeable cations Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺ and K⁺ no significant differences were found, while exchangeable Na⁺ and ESP were significantly increased in both soil layers during the short period of soil drying before harvest. The final values of Na⁺ and ESP were quite low to indicate soil degradation hazard. Overall the results showed adequate performance of WMPs to preserve a good soil salinity status but with the cost of high water consumption, exceeding 2000 mm.

Food and feed production must be increased or maintained in order to meet the demands of the earth’s population. Under this scenario, the question that arises is how to address the demand for agricultural products given that the pressures on land use have already increased. In addition, it is obvious that climate change will have a serious negative impact and threaten the productivity and sustainability of food production systems. Therefore, understanding and predicting the outcome of crop production, while considering adaptation and sustainability, is essential. The need for information on decision making at all levels, from crop management to adaptation strategies, is constantly increasing and methods for providing such information are urgently needed in a relatively short period of time. Thus arises the need to use effective data, such as satellite and meteorological data, but also operational tools, to assess crop yields over local, regional, national, and global scales. In this work, three modeling approaches built on a fusion of satellite-derived vegetation indices, agro-meteorological indicators, and crop phenology are tested and evaluated in terms of data intensiveness for the prediction of wheat yields in large scale applications. The obtained results indicated that medium input data intensity methods are effective tools for yield assessments. The methods, namely, a semi-empirical regression model, a machine learning regression model, and a process-based model, provided high to moderate accuracies by fully relying on freely available datasets as sources of input data. The findings are comparable with those reported in the literature for detailed field experiments, thereby introducing a promising framework that can support operational platforms for dynamic yield forecasting, operating at the administrative or regional unit scale.

Simple formulas for estimating annual actual evapotranspiration (AET) based on annual climate data are widely used in large scale applications. Such formulas do not have distinct compartments related to topography, soil and irrigation, and for this reason may be limited in basins with high slopes, where runoff is the dominant water balance component, and in basins where irrigated agriculture is dominant. Thus, a simplistic method for assessing AET in both natural ecosystems and agricultural systems considering the aforementioned elements is proposed in this study. The method solves AET through water balance based on a set of formulas that estimate runoff and percolation. These formulas are calibrated by the results of the deterministic hydrological model GLEAMS (Groundwater Loading Effects of Agricultural Management Systems) for a reference surface. The proposed methodology is applied to the country of Greece and compared with the widely used climate-based methods of Oldekop, Coutagne and Turk. The results show that the proposed methodology agrees very well with the method of Turk for the lowland regions but presents significant differences in places where runoff is expected to be very high (sloppy areas and areas of high rainfall, especially during December–February), suggesting that the proposed method performs better due to its runoff compartment. The method can also be applied in a single application considering irrigation only for the irrigated lands to more accurately estimate AET in basins with a high percentage of irrigated agriculture.

BEACON is a market-led project that couples cutting edge Earth Observation (EO) technology with weather intelligence and blockchain to deliver a toolbox for the Agricultural Insurance (AgI) sector with timely cost-efficient and actionable insights for the agri-insurance industry. BEACON enables insurance companies to exploit the untapped market potential of AgI, while contributing to the redefinition of existing AgI products and services. The Damage Assessment Calculator of BEACON employs remote sensing techniques in order to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of agri-insurance by: (i) increasing the objectivity of the experts field inspections; (ii) reducing the cost of field visits and (iii) increasing farmers’ confidence in the estimation results, given the significant economic impact of erroneous estimation. This paper provides an analysis of different type of EO data and remote sensing techniques implemented in the operational workflow of BEACON that can be used by AgI companies to provide safe and reliable results on storms, floods, wildfires and droughts damage on crops.