What question did this study set out to answer?

Assess the water footprint using a revised method to enhance understanding of water use in South-Central Chile's agriculture and forestry.

March 10, 2026International Soil and Water Conservation Research0 citationsOpen Access

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How Much Water Do We Really Appropriate? A Revised Water Footprint and its Application in the Agriculture and Forestry of South-Central Chile

SHSteven Hidalgo-Toapanta PRPasiano Rivas-GarcíaUniversidad Autónoma de Nuevo León PNPatricio Neumann-LangdonUniversidad Adventista de Chile

Key Points

Assess the water footprint using a revised method to enhance understanding of water use in South-Central Chile's agriculture and forestry.
Developed a novel approach based on the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production framework.
Calculated total water footprint values in the study area.
Compared results with conventional water footprint methodologies.
Total water footprint estimated at 5,023 Mm³/yr.
Blue water footprint constituted 60.8%, while green water footprint made up 39.2%.
Proposed methodology yielded a green water footprint 5.3 times lower than traditional methods.
44.8% of the total water footprint was linked to virtual water flows from exports.

Abstract

Water scarcity is a widespread issue for society. The water footprint (WF) is a widely used method to quantify water use, but concerns exist about its capacity to correctly assess the volume of water appropriated by human activities. In this article, we proposed and applied a novel approach to estimate the WF based on the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) framework. Our method resulted in a total WF of 5,023 Mm 3 /yr (60.8% blue WF, 39.2% green WF) for the study area (South-Central Chile), a value 2.7 times lower than the conventional methodology. The differences are attributed to green WF, as its calculation using our proposed methodology resulted in values 5.3 times lower. Overall, 44.8% of the total WF was linked to virtual water flows associated with the export of agricultural and forestry products. Our study underscores the need for improved water accounting methods as a basis for more sustainable management.

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Cite This Study

Hidalgo-Toapanta et al. (Sun,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69af950a70916d39fea4c3d5 https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2026.100640

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