The environmental degradation, because of various factors, such as climate change, human activities, increase of population globally, etc. have brought on pressures on the fresh water supplies that vary on time and space. Consequently, economic, environmental, and social tools have emerged known as footprints, in an effort to examine and measure the needs and consequences of humanity on the Earth's life support systems and take measures towards sustainable development. Furthermore, the constantly worsening environmental conditions have resulted in the cultivation of a green culture among society stakeholders that brought on terms such as green marketing and green products. This paper deals with the water footprint (WF) concept and an effort is performed, to explore through a literature review, in which ways it can contribute to the sustainable development of water use, in the context of green marketing (GM) strategies. The approach of the analysis is based on the discrimination to the following aspects: international scale, national and subnational scale, farmers, business, and consumers, in order to track the affection of each part in water issues. The main findings of the literature review showed that the aforementioned factors are playing a key role in protecting water recourses, by the way they formulate their water use and they are interrelated and interdependent. WFs can be useful in the context of GM, by providing helpful information about direct and indirect water consumption, to every contributor factor in supply chains, to consumers, governments, and water managers.
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the water footprints (WFs) of all the main crops on Rhodes island at a municipal unit (MU) scale, as well as for the area of the island as a whole. WF estimations are made with a distinction of rainfed and irrigated crops, using CROPWAT 8.0. Rainfed crops and the drip irrigation method are predominant in the study area, which faces water scarcity issues. Furthermore, a reduction factor in plant coefficients is introduced, to adapt to the drip irrigation technique. From the findings obtained, useful conclusions are drawn regarding the most water-demanding crops, but also the type of their WF component (blue/green/gray). In all categories of crops, there are large fluctuations across MUs, mainly due to the different yields. Higher WF values occur for rainfed and irrigated olives, which constitute the predominant crop, followed by hard and soft wheat. WF is a useful indicator identifying which crops require improvement or restructuring in a study area, and quantifies the exact volumes of water, which is a useful element in the formulation of agricultural policy in the context of sustainable water resources management.
During the last decade, there has been an intensive research activity concerning the concept of the Water Footprint (WF) approach, which was firstly introduced by Arjen Hoekstra in 2002. WF is an indicator of direct and indirect freshwater use of a consumer or producer that takes into account water consumption in every step (intermediate and final) along the production chain and services. The concept can be implemented in various levels such as products, consumers, producers, nations and river basins etc.. The water footprint within a geographically delineated area equals the sum of the process water footprints of all processes taking place in the area. The aim of current research is a review of the most important WF studies, with a special focus on applications within regional, basin and administrative unit level. National and global scales are not included in the current paper. The article presents the most widespread methodologies and approaches that attempt to evaluate water footprints of specific defined areas and highlights their recent advances as well as shortcomings in the constantly evolving research efforts.
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the green (from rainfall) and blue (from irrigation) evapotranspiration of the most widespread crops (olives, citrus, soft and hard wheat, watermelons/melons, barley, grapes, vegetables, winter/summer and spring potatoes, fodder crops, rest annual crops) in the geographical area of Rhodes island. While the soils of the island belong to the same category, according to the classification "USDA Texture Classification" and could be roughly considered as a homogeneous medium soil (loam) in CROPWAT software, a separation takes place in four categories, in order to investigate whether the evapotranspiration of crops varies, even in the same ground category, depending on the relation of the mechanical soil composition. Furthermore a comparison takes place with the medium soil default value of CROPWAT. The examination included the separation of irrigated and rainfed crops at the scale of municipal unit. Calculations were made on the basis of the irrigation schedule approach, which includes a dynamic water balance of the soil profile and monitors soil moisture content over time.
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