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WATERIGHT Online Irrigation Scheduling Brought to you by: California Department of Food and Ag Specialty Crop Block Grant Program & Center For Irrigation Technology
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CIT..CENTER FOR IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY
• CIT roots trace back + 50 years • Formally est. 1980 at California State University, Fresno • Recognized leader in: – – – –
Hydraulic testing Field Research Analytical Studies Education
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Hydraulic Laboratory Testing
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Water Technology Testing
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Equipment Testing
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Field Research Studies
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Education and Training
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About WATERIGHT • The WATERIGHT - developed by the CIT with support from the US Bureau of Reclamation. • WATERIGHT is designed to be a multi-function, educational resource for irrigation water management. • Recently Funded by CA DWR
www.wateright.org
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What is WATERIGHT? • Irrigation Scheduling Tool
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WATERIGHT • IMPORTANT NOTE!! – The irrigation schedules produced by WATERIGHT are only estimates of plant / water requirements. They are based on longterm, average weather patterns and average crop coefficient curves. – Field verification by the user is absolutely necessary to ensure proper soil moisture levels and plant health throughout a growing season.
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WATERIGHT • 3 sections
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WATERIGHT • Agricultural Users: – Farmers and users whom want to do irrigation scheduling but know nothing about the subject. – Farmers whom know about scheduling and want to use WATERIGHT as a tool for more efficient watering schedules.
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WATERIGHT • Commercial Turf Growers: – – – –
Commercial business Golf course managers Parks and recreation Landscape managers
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WATERIGHT • Homeowners: – Home owners whom want to check their irrigation scheduling or improve upon them.
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Terms • Evapotranspiration (ET) is the loss of water to the atmosphere by the combined processes of evaporation (from soil and plant surfaces) and transpiration (from plant tissues). It is an indicator of how much water your crops, lawn, garden, and trees need for healthy growth and productivity • ET from a standardized grass surface is commonly denoted as ETo whereas ET from a standardized alfalfa surface is denoted as ETr.
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Terms
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Terms • Crop coefficients (Kc) are used with ETo to estimate specific crop evapotranspiration rates. • The crop coefficient is a dimensionless number (usually between 0.1 and 1.2) • It is multiplied by the ETo value to arrive at a crop ET (ETc) estimate. • The resulting ETc can be used to help an irrigation manager schedule when an irrigation should occur and how much water should be put back into the soil.
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Terms • By using the evapotranspiration (ETo) and crop coefficients (Kc) growers can quantify how much to irrigate during different growth stages. An average ETo throughout California are readily available online from multiple sources, i.e., – http://wwwcimis.water.ca.gov/cimis/data.jsp – anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/ – www.wateright.org
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Terms • Crop Coefficient SAMPLE:
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Terms Typical Curve- Annual Crop
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Terms Typical Curve – Permanent Crop
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Kc Curve from Wateright
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Kc Curve From Wateright
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Terms • Example: – If, ETo = 0.25 inches/day – and, Kc = 0.55 (for an orange tree in July) – then, ETc = ETo x Kc = 0.25 inches/day x 0.55 = 0.1375 or 0.14 inches/day
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Terms • Scheduling Coefficient: The scheduling coefficient is calculated by comparing the application rate in the driest contiguous area to the application rate in the entire area. (Irrigation Uniformity) • Application Rate: The application rate is the average rate (usually expressed in inches per hour in the U.S.) that water is applied by an irrigation system. • Start Day of the Week: WATERIGHT will generate a schedule. You can control what day of the week the schedule period starts. • Schedule Period: WATERIGHT will summarize daily information into one, two, or four week intervals. • Starts/Week: How many times the sprinklers will be run per week. For example: if the sprinklers are run two times per day on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday then starts/week = 6 (2 x 3).
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Terms • Leaflets to crop coefficients http://biomet.ucdavis.edu/irrigation_scheduling/bis/BIS.htm
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CIMIS
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CIMIS • Wow does CIMIS work? – Specific weather parameters are collected on site and temporarily stored in a data logger that is mounted on the mast of the weather stations. A computer at DWR headquarters in Sacramento calls every CIMIS station beginning around midnight (Pacific Standard Time) and retrieves the previous days data. The data is checked for quality and flagged, if necessary. Flagging does not mean the data is bad but as an indication of possible problems or deviations from expected normalcy. The flagging is explained in the quality control section of this web site. Reference Evapotranspiration (ETo) is calculated from this data and stored in a database along with the collected climatic data. Users can access the stored data via the Internet and/or FTP.
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CIMIS - Stations
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Spatial CIMIS • The Spatial CIMIS page provides the ability to view daily reference evapotranspiration (ETo), daily solar radiation (Rs), station location, and long-term average ETo zones maps and to generate daily ETo and Rs data at 2 km spatial resolution for the State of California.
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Spatial CIMIS
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CIMIS • Variables – – – – –
EA – Hourly Vapor Pressure (kPa) RH – Mean Hourly humidity (%) Rn – Mean Net Radiation (Celsius) U – Mean Hourly Wind Speed at 2 meters (ms) Z – Elevation of the station above mean sea level
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CIMIS • Calculations – http://wwwcimis.water.ca.gov/cimis/infoEtoCimisE quation.jsp
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Irrigation Performance • Two ways – Irrigation Efficiency – Distribution Uniformity
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Distribution Uniformity • Measure of how evenly water is spread across a field • How to find DU – DUlq / Average DU of Field
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Distribution Uniformity • How to find DU • .10, .10, .12, .25, .25, .25, .27, .27, .30, .30, .30, .35 • lq = .10+.10+.12+.25/4 = .1425 • Overall Average = 2.86/12 = .238 • DU = .1425/.238 =.598 or 60%
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Know Your System • Every pressurized irrigation system should be designed, installed, and maintained with the goal of achieving good DU • Good DU gives the system manager the potential to save water, fertilizer, and energy • Once good DU is achieved, Irrigation, Fertigation, and Energy Efficiency can be the result
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What are some of the reasons for a low DU 1. Poor design 2. Elevation differences 3. Poor maintenance -Leaks -Plugged emitters -Pressure Valves not calibrated properly -Pump flow and pressure don’t match system design -Poor filter maintenance or design
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Get the irrigation system audited
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Irrigation Efficiency • What is irrigation efficiency ?
– Irrigation efficiency (IE) is a measure of how much applied water is used beneficially. A general equation for irrigation efficiency would be: • IE = Beneficial Use of Applied Water / Total Applied Water
– It is not generally possible to achieve 100% IE due to immediate evaporation losses during an irrigation. An exception might be a sub-surface drip system that was managed to under-water the crop.
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Good IE, Poor DU
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Good DU bad IE
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Good DU & IE
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Irrigation Scheduling • What is irrigation scheduling and why is it important ? – Irrigation scheduling is a generic term for a number of techniques that aide the irrigator in determining when and how much to irrigate. – When to irrigate is usually an agronomic question. - Plant Stress – How much to irrigate generally depends on the type of irrigation system. If it is a low-frequency flood-type system, furrows or border checks, "how much" to irrigate is generally the soil moisture deficit in the root zone plus any leaching fractions needed to maintain a salt balance. With high-frequency, micro-irrigation systems the "how much" is a calculation of required hours of operation based on the estimated crop water use.
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Simple Example The equation to convert ETc to hours of system operation is... HR = ETc * AREA / (GPH * AE * 1.605) where: HR = daily hours of system operation ETc = daily crop water use in inches/day GPH = total flow to each plant in gallons per hour AE = system efficiency as a decimal 0 - 1.0 For example, there is a grape vineyard with two 1-gallon per hour emitters per vine. The vines are spaced 8 by 12. The estimated system efficiency is 80% (.8 as a decimal) and the current daily crop water use is estimated at .25 inches/day. Then... HR = ETc * AREA / (GPH * AE * 1.605) HR = .25 * (8 * 12) / (2 * .8 * 1.605) HR = 9 hours of operation per day
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Effects on Drinking Water • Proper Irrigation can limit leaching.
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Figure ES-2. Overview of cropland input and output (Gg N/yr) in the study area (Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley) in 2005. The left half of the pie chart represents total nitrogen inputs to 1.27 million ha (3.12 million ac) of cropland, not including alfalfa. The right half of the pie chart represents total nitrogen outputs with leaching to groundwater estimated by difference between the known inputs and the known outputs. Source: Viers et al. 2012. Estimated groundwater nitrate loading from major sources within the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley, in Gg nitrogen per year (1 Gg = 1,100 t).
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Effects on Drinking Water • The major public concerns are the movement of nitrogen or especially nitrate (a highly soluble form of nitrogen which can easily move thru soil profile with water), and its accumulations in groundwater.
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Effects on Drinking Water • 250,000 residents in the San Joaquin Valley are affected by nitrates in drinking water. • 95% of the San Joaquin Valley’s residence are on well water. • 1 in 10 wells effected
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Effects on Drinking Water Why is it an Issue? • Small communities • Cant afford to treat their water properly. • Health Issues – Gastrointestinal problems – Methemoglobinemia – Blue baby syndrome
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Effects on Ground Water • UC Davis research trials have found a small loss (less than 5%) of nitrogen moving past the root zone – suggesting that with proper irrigation and nutrient management, growers can mitigate the effects of nutrients leaching into groundwater sources • 85% of the nitrogen was used by the plant.
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Effects on Drinking Water • Why is irrigaton scheduling important? – Less water available – Dropping water tables – Irrigation management is a crucial key to utilize fertilizer effectively on farmlands.
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Irrigation Scheduling
R o o t Z o n e
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Irrigation Scheduling
R o o t Z o n e
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Other Technology • Soil Moisture Sensors – Another method to prevent leaching is using soil moisture sensors to monitor water movement through the soil. The sensors will show depth of of water that carries the nitrates.
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Soil Moisture Sensors
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Soil Moisture Sensors
1 ft 2 ft 3 ft 4 ft
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Before Using WATERIGHT • • • •
Know Your Soil Type Know Your Irrigation System Know Your Crop Know Your Water
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Know Your Soil
Water movement on various soil textures – In sandy soils, water readily moves downward due to the force of gravity. – In clayey soils, water slowly moves out in all direction by capillary action.
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Water Holding Capacity
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Water Holding Capacity
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Know Your System • Type of System – Flood, Microsprinklers, drip, etc.
• • • •
Spacing Efficiency Cover Crop Type of emitters – Microsprinklers, drip,
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Know Your Crop • Crop water needs (Kc) • Crop nutrient requirement – Entire growing season – Splitting application to improve FUE
• Crop physiology – Growth stage – Rooting depth
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Know Your Water • Test irrigation water • Free fertilizer (nitrate) • Salinity level (crop tolerance), potential yield reduction • EC of the water
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Cookies • WATERIGHT uses Cookies – A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity.
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Agriculture • Under scheduling select “Agriculture.”
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Agriculture
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Agriculture • It will take you to this screen.
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Agriculture • Select “New”.
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Agriculture • A new screen will appear that looks like this.
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Agriculture • Enter a Field Name.
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Agriculture • Select “Choose Station”.
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Agriculture
• Select “San Joaquin” or appropriate region for you.
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Agriculture • Select “Fresno 80 (CSU Fresno)” or appropriate region for you.
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Agriculture • Click on “Use This Station”.
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Agriculture • It will take you back to the initial entry screen. Click “Set Time/Irrigation Set”. • Enter 18 for hours.
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Agriculture • Click on “Choose Crop”.
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Agriculture - It will take you to a new screen - On Crop Name drop down menu select “Almond” - Default Settings will appear
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Agriculture • Enter Maximum Root Depth “5”. • Click “Next”.
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Agriculture • It will take you to the new screen below. • Select “Back to Field Entry”.
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Agriculture • You should now be back on the home entry page. • Go down to “Choose Soil >>>” click on the drop down and select a soil type.
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Agriculture • Next by “Choose System>>” click on the drop down menu and select an irrigation system type.
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Agriculture • It will take you to the following screen below. • Enter a percentage for “System Emission Uniformity”, “Flow Rate”, Tree Spacing, diameter of spray”.
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Agriculture • After entering the required information click “Back to Field Entry”.
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Agriculture • Once all the required information has been entered and selected click “Schedule This Field”.
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Agriculture
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Agriculture
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Agriculture
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Upcoming Improvements • Ca Dept. Water Resources Funding – District Level scheduling and deliveries
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Upcoming Improvements • Moisture Balance and Water movement tools
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Site Specific Data • Up to 2 miles from site
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Other Software • For other Irrigation Software go to: http://wwwcimis.water.ca.gov/cimis/infoIrrSoftware.jsp
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Review • Irrigation Scheduling – Improve Efficiency – Moisture Balance – Nutrient Movement • Know your Field – Know Your Soil Type – Know Your Irrigation System (Performance) – Know Your Crop – Know Your Water
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Questions 20 minute break
