Article in the St. Galler Tagblatt newspaper from 28.07.2018
Fascinating article about the successfully launched drought project in the canton of Thurgau.
‘Thurgau is getting ready for times of extreme drought and water shortage.’ (German)
Water scarcity/drought
Climate change is increasingly resulting in hotter and drier summer months. If the level of flowing water falls below a certain mark, farming can be banned from drawing water. This means that the fields can no longer be irrigated sufficiently, resulting in crop failures.
Holistic water management
We determine water demand and water supply by region and compare them in water balance maps. This allows regions with an excess of water or with water deficits to be seen at a glance. It is possible to draw up suitable measures such as water redistribution, adapted agriculture, irrigation strategies, etc. from these maps. Providing a suitable communication tool to be used during a drought allows early and targeted communication with the agricultural sector.
Arid alpine area
Global warming is increasingly causing hotter and drier summer months. In mountainous regions, the decrease in the amount of water leads to bottlenecks and conflicts over water use. The main sectors affected are agriculture and hydropower plants, which are also subject to the residual water law. In addition, climate change is affecting the water system in some regions due to glacier retreat, earlier snowmelt, and changing precipitation distribution throughout the year. These major changes require a long-term strategy to sustain activities in mountainous areas.
These include, for example, analysing regional climate change and identifying water demand/supply by region. From this, both short and long term measures can be developed to adapt mountain agriculture to climate change.