Governance in the Face of Uncertainty and Change - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 172

Turno between Canals
The turno is the process employed during drought
periods to manage a proportional reduction of
water rights and distribution of water to
different users on a specific daily schedule.

For example, if there are five zones to a canal, each zone will
receive water for 7 days. So the first zone is allocated water
for 1 week, and then for the next 4 weeks they receive no
water. During the time that it doesn't receive water, the
zone is dry, and the other zones are allocated water in their
shifts.

Farm/Company level adaptations
Crop Choice - At the farm level, some of the Juntas
encourage diversification of crops during more
extreme periods. Once planted, the avocado
trees are permanent features of the agricultural
landscape and have a larger requirement for
irrigation. About 70% trees are avocado, the
rest are orange, lemons and mandarins. A
smaller percentage of farmers grow vegetables,
which are much more flexible.

One method is to warn farmers in advance of the planting
season, that the next summer is likely to be dry allowing
them to not plant certain vegetable and plants and so
reducing their overall demand for water.

Extraction of underground water, for which farmers
may or may not have rights.

Farmers also adapt to the reduction in supply (from the turno
or not) by relying on wells used to extract underground
water (whether or not they have rights to it). Therefore,
when surface water dries, they can just dig down to extract
the groundwater.

Water Transfers from Aconcagua River to drier
areas of the region.

Water transfers have been conducted between the Aconcagua
River to La Ligua, Limache and Marga-Marga using trucks
to transport the water across during drought periods.