Technological innovations applied to water management in landscape

In recent decades there has been registering an increase of the area occupied by public and private green spaces. These spaces are of fundamental importance in the quality of living and emerge as a need for a healthy ecological balance in the urban environment. However, the increase of green areas in Mediterranean areas where rainfall is uneven throughout the year means an increase in water demand for irrigation. To prevent this increase becomes unsustainable it is necessary to schedule irrigation in green spaces according plant water requirements, thereby contributing to the efficient use of water at a time of great competition in the use of available water resources. This paper aims to contribute to finding solutions technologically innovative and environmentally sustainable water management for the irrigation of green spaces. It was chosen a public green space of 2520 m2 in Esposende (Portugal), consisting of 6 beds. During the 2012 campaign irrigation (June to September), this was carried out using a watering schedule irrigation controller based on the calculation of daily evapotranspiration by Hargreaves method. These volumes were compared with historical records (2008 to 2011) in the same space when irrigation scheduling was based on runtimes. The amount of water applied in 2012 was 1499 mm and in the period of 2008 to 2011 ranged between values of 985 and 2164 mm. We performed an audit of the irrigation system which resulted in a set of proposals for improvement. The implementation of these measures has resulted in water savings of 53%. The results showed that the use of new technologies in irrigation is reflected both in saving water, saving time and labor of the technicians, and improving the visual quality of the irrigated green spaces.