Water Footprint (WF) — water_footprint • wefnexus

Computes the water footprint of crop production decomposed into green, blue, and grey components following the Water Footprint Assessment framework.

water_footprint(
  green_water,
  blue_water,
  grey_water = 0,
  yield,
  area = 1,
  per_ton = FALSE,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

green_water: Numeric vector. Green water use, i.e., effective rainfall consumed by the crop during growth (mm).
blue_water: Numeric vector. Blue water use, i.e., irrigation water applied and consumed (mm).
grey_water: Numeric vector. Grey water, i.e., freshwater volume required to dilute pollutant load to acceptable standards (mm). Default is 0.
yield: Numeric vector. Crop yield (kg/ha).
area: Numeric. Crop area in hectares. Default is 1.
per_ton: Logical. If TRUE, returns water footprint in m3/ton. Default FALSE, returning m3/kg.
verbose: Logical. If TRUE, prints informational messages. Default TRUE.

Value

A data frame with four numeric columns:

green_wf: Green water footprint (m3/kg or m3/ton)
blue_wf: Blue water footprint (m3/kg or m3/ton)
grey_wf: Grey water footprint (m3/kg or m3/ton)
total_wf: Total water footprint (m3/kg or m3/ton)

Details

The water footprint per unit mass of product is: $$WF = \frac{CWU \times 10}{Y}$$ where CWU is crop water use (mm) and Y is yield (kg/ha). The factor 10 converts mm over 1 ha to m3.

References

Hoekstra, A.Y., Chapagain, A.K., Aldaya, M.M. & Mekonnen, M.M. (2011). The Water Footprint Assessment Manual: Setting the Global Standard. Earthscan, London. ISBN:9781849712798.

Mialyk, O. et al. (2024). Water footprints and crop water use of 175 individual crops for 1990-2019 simulated with a global crop model. Scientific Data, 11, 200. doi:10.1038/s41597-024-03051-3

Examples

water_footprint(green_water = 300, blue_water = 200,
                grey_water = 50, yield = 4000)
#> Water footprint computed (m3/kg).
#>   green_wf blue_wf grey_wf total_wf
#> 1     0.75     0.5    0.12     1.37