Water scarcity and droughts are a major concern in most Mediterranean countries. Agriculture is a major user of water in the region and releases significant amounts of surface and ground waters, endangering the sustainable use of the available resources. Best Management Practices (BMPs) can mitigate the agriculture impacts on quantity of surface waters in agricultural catchments. However, identification of efficient BMPs strategies is a complex task, because BMPs costs and effectiveness can vary significantly within a basin. In this study, sustainable agricultural practices were studied based on optimal allocation of irrigation water use for dominant irrigated crops in the island of Crete, Greece. A decision support tool that integrates the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) watershed model, an economic model, and multi-objective optimization routines, was used to identify and locate optimal irrigation strategies by considering crop water requirements, impact of irrigation changes on crop productivity, management strategies costs, and crop market prices. Three spatial scales (crop type, fields, and administrative regions) were considered to point out different approaches of efficient management. According to the analysis, depending on the spatial scale and complexity of spatial optimization, water irrigation volumes could be reduced by 32%–70% while preserving current agricultural benefit. Specific management strategies also looked at ways to relocate water between administrative regions (4 prefectures in the case of Crete) to optimize crop benefit while reducing global water use. It was estimated that an optimal reallocation of water could reduce irrigation water volumes by 52% (148 Mm³/y) at the cost of a 7% (48 M€) loss of agricultural income, but maintaining the current agricultural benefit (626.9 M€). The study showed how the identification of optimal, cost-effective irrigation management strategies can potentially address the water scarcity issue that is becoming crucial for the viability of agriculture in the Mediterranean region.

在大多数地中海国家中，缺水和干旱是一个主要问题。农业是该地区水的主要使用者，并释放大量的地表水和地下水，危及现有资源的可持续利用。最佳管理规范（BMP）可以减轻农业对农业流域地表水量的影响。但是，确定有效的BMP策略是一项复杂的任务，因为在一个流域内BMP的成本和有效性可能有很大差异。在这项研究中，基于希腊克里特岛主要灌溉作物的灌溉用水的最佳分配，研究了可持续农业实践。决策支持工具整合了土壤和水评估工具（SWAT）分水岭模型，经济模型，通过考虑作物需水量，灌溉变化对作物生产力的影响，管理策略成本和作物市场价格，使用多目标优化例程和多目标优化例程来确定和确定最佳灌溉策略。考虑了三个空间尺度（作物类型，田地和行政区域），指出了有效管理的不同方法。根据分析，根据空间规模和空间优化的复杂性，在保持当前农业收益的同时，灌溉水量可减少32％–70％。具体的管理策略还研究了在行政区域之间进行调水的方法（克里特岛为4个州），以在减少全球用水量的同时优化农作物的收益。³ /年），但损失了7％（4800万欧元）的农业收入，但仍保持了当前的农业收益（6.269亿欧元）。该研究表明，确定最佳的，具有成本效益的灌溉管理策略如何能够潜在地解决水资源短缺问题，而水资源短缺问题对于地中海地区农业的生存至关重要。