Finland

Area equipped for irrigation for 20 regions (103 800 ha in total) was derived from the EU farm structure survey 2003 [FI01]. The irrigated area per region estimated that way is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Finland irrigation areas in PDF or Finland irrigation areas in Excel.

Maps showing the location of irrigation areas in Finland were not available. Therefore area equipped for irrigation was assigned to all areas classified as non-irrigated arable land (211) in the Corine 2000 land cover database for Europe [FI02].

In Finland, irrigation water is extracted in most cases from lakes. Groundwater extraction occurres mainly in vegetable production because of the higher water quality of groundwater [FI03], but statistics on the involved areas were not available. Based on the qualitative information in this aforementioned report and considering the situation in neighbouring Sweden, percentage of irrigated area from groundwater sources was estimated at 15 percent. The area actually irrigated is however much lower than the equipped area, in dry summers about 20 000 – 40 000 ha are irrigated [FI04]. The main irrigated crops are vegetables, potatoes and beets ([FI04], [FI05]). Based on this information AAI was estimated at 15 000 ha.

References

[FI01]: Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT). 2011. Irrigable and irrigated areas. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/ page/portal/agri_environmental_indicators/data/ database, 28/11/2011.
[FI02]: 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.
[FI03]: Pajula, H. and Triipponen, J.-P. 2003. Selvitys Suomen kastelutilanteesta: esimerkkialueena Varsinais-Suomi. (A survey of the irrigation in Finland – case study Southwestern Finland). The Finnish Environment 629. Finnish Environment Institute, Helsinki, Finland, http://www.ymparisto.fi/default.asp?contentid=33041, 18/08/2009.
[FI04]: Baldock, D., Caraveli, H., Dwyer, J., Einschütz, S., Petersen, J.E., Sumpsi-Vinas, J. & Varela-Ortega, C. 2000. The environmental impacts of irrigation in the European Union. A report to the Environment Directorate of the European Commission, 147 pp., http://ec.europa.eu/environment/agriculture/, 07/07/2006.
[FI05]: Sierla, J. 2006. Water resources management and agriculture in Finland. Summary report available at the web-page of the Finnish National Committee of the ICID (FINCID), http://www.salaojakeskus.fi/fincid/indexeng.htm, 07/07/2006.