The Regional STICS model was implemented on the La Mancha area which is located on the upper part of the JUCAR river bason. The following questions identified as key issues by stakeholders were addressed:

         - Sustainability of the aquifer by balancing water uptake and recharge. Regional STICS was used to estimate those terms
         - The crop potential under future climate and further water needs;

The demonstration aims at evaluating the quality of Regional STICS output when it is implemented with available spatial information and a very simplified representation of cropping systems. Focus was made on the characterization of land use and its translation in terms of simulation cases. Soil characteristics were derived from the European soil map and its associated data base. A generic code (in Matlab langage) was developed to implement the simulation considering the different hypothesis underlying the simulation. Results have shown that with simple assumption and without any calibration we arrive in first attempt to interesting results on water needs for irrigation and yields. For the water recharge a better soil characterization is required, especially the soil depth and surface rooting of the runoff water would be necessary to represent run-off-re-infiltration processes that may important in hilly areas.