Use of groundwater for irrigation in Romania

Abstract

The National Land Improvement Agency has in its administration a number of 296 irrigation systems which cover a total land area of 2998255 of hectares. The main source of water for irrigation systems in Romania is the Danube River, followed by smaller rivers and water reservoirs. According to the data presented in this study, in Romania for all five studied years the effectively used groundwater volume for irrigation was smaller than the required volume. Also there is an annual tendency of growing of the effectively used groundwater volume. For the year of 2015 a volume of 6148.07 cubic meters of groundwater were used for irrigation of an area of 10089 hectares. From the data reported in this study it can be observed that a village from Tulcea county has an irrigated area of 2023 hectares with groundwater, representing about 65 % from the total arable area. The largest area where irrigation with groundwater was applied was recorded within the villages of Galati county, over half of the total irrigated area of 10089 hectares. It is well known that Galati county is one of the largest vegetable basins of our country, which is located around the Matca village.