The project “Irrigation and climate change: adaptation measures and monitoring through indicators” developed by the University of Lleida, with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation, has worked on the impact assessment, vulnerability analysis and adaptation options of irrigated agriculture in the face of climate change.

The starting point of this initiative was a technical and scientific review of the cause-effect relationships between climate change and irrigated agriculture, as a basis for the design of possible adaptation indicators. The project has been carried out in the Ebro river basin based on different sources of information (current and historical records of the last 20 years) on climatic, agronomic, hydrological, environmental and socio-economic variables, and the possible interrelationships and trends linked to real changes in irrigation as an adaptive response to climate change are analysed.

The development of the project has involved an extensive literature review on the effects of climate change on irrigated agriculture. Impacts have been assessed, the vulnerability of this sector to climate change has been analysed and measures to adapt this to climate change have been proposed, for which the information available for two Irrigation Communities has been used as a pilot.