Bosnia & Herzegovina

Irrigation potential for Bosnia Herzegovina was estimated at 74 000 ha, but only 4 630 ha are equipped for irrigation [BA01]. The irrigated area of the country is concentrated in three irrigation systems:
- Ljubuški and Ljubuški Polje (2 800 ha),
- Trebinje and Trebinjsko Polje (650 ha), and
- Dubrava Plateau [BA02].

The boundaries of the irrigation systems were digitized from a map published in [BA03]. Irrigated area was assigned to all areas within the digitized polygons that were classified in the Corine 2000 land cover database for Europe [BA04] as non-irrigated arable land (211), fruit trees and berry plantations (222), complex cultivation patterns (242) or land principally occupied by agriculture, with significant areas of natural vegetation (243).

Most of the larger public irrigation schemes in Bosnia and Herzegovina extract water from the Neretva River or its main tributaries, while small scale irrigation is often practised using groundwater (springs, wells, sub-surface streams in the Karst system). The actual extent of irrigation and therefore also the fraction of irrigation areas using groundwater is uncertain because of missing information on the extent of informal irrigation schemes and because a significant part of the irrigation infrastructure was destroyed in the last war [BA03]. Percentage of irrigated area from groundwater sources was estimated at 30 percent based on the description of the irrigation infrastructure in [BA02]. The irrigated area is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Bosnia and Herzegovina irrigation areas in PDF or Bosnia and Herzegovina irrigation areas in Excel.

References

[BA01]: Civil Society Promotion Center. 2002. Environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002. http://enrin.grida.no/htmls/bosnia/bosnia2002/index.html, 07/07/2006.
[BA02]: World Bank. 2002. Bosnia and Herzegovina Small Scale Commercial Agricultural Development Project. Environmental assessment. http://www-wds.worldbank.org/, 12/08/2009.
[BA03]: World Bank. 2003. Bosnia and Herzegovina Small Scale Commercial Agricultural Development Project. Project appraisal document. Report No: 25519-BiH, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/, 12/08/2009.
[BA04]: EEA. 2005. Corine land cover 2000 - vector by country (CLC2000), version 1. http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/metadetails.asp?id=667, 29/08/2005.