Agricultural hydroinformatics: An emerging approach to water sustainability transitions in farming systems

Abstract:

The growing world population and its consequences on the Earth-system carrying capacity have led to widespread discussion and consensus on the urgent need for the field of agriculture to move away from business-as-usual practices and embrace sustainability-promoting approaches. In this regard, a variety of approaches (e.g., “ecological intensification”, “agroecological intensification”, “sustainable intensification”) promoting transitions to sustainable practices have emerged. Given the sociotechnical nature of these approaches and the unique role of water in connecting, affecting and being affected by (quantitatively and qualitatively) all agricultural subsystems, we posit that “a mix of water-resources-centric technological, social and institutional innovations at different scales represents a pivot to underpin transitions to sustainable agriculture”. This latter is often seen as an umbrella term for knowledge-intensive systems (e.g., “Precision Agriculture”) that require a new kind of knowledge, which is often developed or emerged as the knowledge of how to apply (domain) knowledge in new ways, i.e., a metaknowledge. In a context of focusing on water resources management as pivot to enact sustainability-promoting approaches, this metaknowledge is known as Hydroinformatics.

This paper will present an overview of the interplay between hydroinformatics and agriculture to introduce agricultural hydroinformatics as a new field of research. In addition, it will introduce a multi-component discipline-delineated framework that stems from the particularities of applying hydroinformatics in agriculture. Such a framework is developed to serve as a stepping-stone to achieve, not only integrated water resources management, but also agricultural sustainability transitions in general. Last, it will present definitions and roles for this emerging field.