Hands on experiments about water needs in agriculture and their mathematical modelling under climate change

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to present the planning of experiences that can be presented to students of school age. These experiments have the goal of sensitizing students to climate changes, the problem of water scarcity and the need to save it. At the same time, the experiences give an opportunity to show through concrete cases how Mathematics can model natural phenomena in order to understand them better and predict future behavior. Agriculture is the economic sector that spends more water with low degree of efficiency (about 60 %). Efficient irrigation systems are necessary, and smart irrigation systems are being designed and implemented in our research group, https://sofialope6.wixsite.com/to-chair. In order to achieve smart irrigation, complex mathematical models were developed and programmed in MatLab/Octave. However, purpose of this paper is to motivate students to this issue. In particular, we intend to show how mathematics can be a fun, and valuable tool to understand many concepts linked with smart irrigation. We describe a set of simple experiments, that can easily be performed at home, that may be a valuable tool to understand "hands on" concepts like soil differences, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and infiltration of water in the soil and efficiency of the water used.