Investigation of Virtual Water and Ecological Footprints of Water in Wheat Fields of Isfahan Province

Despite the recent droughts in Isfahan province, climatic changes and the rising trend of population growth, as well as development of industrial and agricultural activities, are exposed to the water crisis. Thus, in order to tackle this problem, the essential strategies should including exploring virtual water and water foot print for strategic crops in agricultural sector should be taken into consideration for the management of water supplies at risk. This study was aimed to examine virtual water and ecologic fingerprint of water for the wheat crop in Isfahan Province from the farming year 2006-7 through 2014-15. For this purpose, the quantity of virtual water was extracted using net irrigation demand by NETWAT software and the rate of irrigation efficiency was computed to be 48%. The results indicated that only in 2007, Isfahan province was an exporter of virtual water for the wheat crop, so this province exported about 0.15 billion cubic meters of virtual water to other provinces by wheat exportation, but Isfahan province was the only virtual water in the years (2008-15) and this was due to the annual population rise and the existing drought in this zone. During this period, the rate of the mean annual rate of ecological footprint of water was 5.87 billion cubic meters and Isfahan Province stored this volume of water from the given internal supplies annually, with the mean rate of 0.65 billion cubic meters of virtual water importation at that year.