Evolution and sustainability of groundwater use from the Ica aquifers for the most profitable agriculture in Peru
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Evolution and sustainability of groundwater use from the Ica aquifers for the most profitable agriculture in Peru Enrique Fernández-Escalante 1 & Stephen Foster 2 & Roberto Navarro-Benegas 3 Received: 1 February 2020 / Accepted: 13 June 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The Ica area of south-eastern Peru has evolved rapidly since the late 1990s into the most advanced agricultural development in the country. The intensive use of waterwells for year-round irrigation, primarily of asparagus, is the basis for an export industry worth about US$ 6,000 M/a, but one which is threatened by serious groundwater sustainability concerns. The public water-resource administration and private agricultural developers are beginning to confront the problem, which has already had a significant social cost, through developing measures to improve the groundwater balance whilst assuring agricultural production. This report presents the long-term evolution of land management and groundwater use in the area, and considers the feasibility of applying an adaptive and integrated water resources management (IWRM) approach to the system, with particular attention to managed aquifer recharge techniques. Keywords Peru . Hyper-arid regions . Groundwater recharge . MAR . Agricultural irrigation
The Ica area: an introduction Ica, with an urban population of 282,000 in 2017, must be one of the world’s largest human settlements in a hyper-arid region, with rainfall less than 10 mm/a. It is situated at about 400 m above sea level (ASL) on the desert coastal strip of Peru, some 300 km south of the capital Lima and 40 km from the Pacific Ocean shoreline (Fig. 1). The only source of water for the city and surrounding agricultural areas derives from the Ica River, which rises in the neighbouring Andean mountain-chain and in the Ica area infiltrates to form two important groundwater systems—the Ica Valley and Pampa Villacurí aquifers. In recent years the exceptionally sunny climate has attracted a large agro-industry to the area, and intensive waterwell abstraction from these groundwater systems is the Enrique Fernández-Escalante is Co-Chair of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) Commission on Managing Aquifer Recharge, and Stephen Foster is IAH Past President (2004–2008)
basis for year-round irrigated agricultural production (mainly for asparagus, avocado and table-grapes). The total area under agricultural cultivation more than doubled between 1998 and 2010 (to 29,500 ha), and grew further in the subsequent years. An additional source of revenue is tourism, with the adjacent Huacachina Oasis, well-developed desert dunes and the Ica Regional Museum (exhibiting both pre-Inca and Spanishcolonial remains) attracting many visitors.
Groundwater occurrence and use Since the Ica Valley and Pampa Villacurí aquifers have a hydraulic connection (with some subsurface flow from the former to the latter; Fig. 2), they have to be considered technically as in unison, but their management needs reveal
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