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Date Published: 21/09/2021
ARCHIVED - 1,000 ground probes in Mar Menor area to check fertiliser and water use
The new instruments will help to combat illegal irrigation and nitrate use on local farms
In the continuing effort to stop farmers illegally watering their crops and using nitrates that spill into the Mar Menor, authorities in the Region of Murcia will start to place sensors in agricultural ground. The project, which will have a budget of 1.4 million euros and is 80% funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), will allow more than 44,000 hectares of crops to be monitored.
There will be a total of 1,000 humidity probes spread across 500 separate points in the Campo de Cartagena, plus 50 flow meters, 25 rain gauges, 500 environmental sensors, 5 pyranometers, 5 complete weather stations, 55 leaf wetting sensors and 25 piezometers.
The Regional Minister for Water, Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and the Environment explained that these detectors will “measure the humidity at different levels of the soil, the electrical conductivity of the soil saturation extract, as well as the temperature and relative humidity in the environment and the soil, and changes in the aquifer level, among other factors”, with the aim of controlling the leachate of nitrate-infected into the Mar Menor.
The new instruments, which work on a mixture of batteries and solar panels, is also expected to help create a more efficient use of irrigation water for farmland in the Mar Menor area. It is one of the new measures, along with cutting off the water supply to farmers who break the ban on watering their crops, that are being introduced in an attempt to minimise pollution in the Mar Menor after hundreds of dead fish brought international attention to the environmental disaster.
The probes on farmland in the area around the Mar Menor will be connected via the cloud to a recording station “which collects the information and sends it to the central server of the Irrigation Community, showing the data received to irrigators and improving their management". The data received are managed by the Spanish Geological Mining Institute (IGME) and the Segura Centre for Soil Science and Applied Biology (CEBAS), belonging to the Spanish National Research Council.
Image: CARM
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