WERA_OLD202: Climatic Data Applications in Irrigation Scheduling and Water Conservation
Statement of Issues and Justification
Climate data collected by federal, state, and local governments is typically distributed by the state climatologist and the federal government. An existing western coordinating committee (WC?S102) coordinates the collection and dissemination of this weather and climate data in the western U.S. and one of the objectives is to promote application of weathe?S and climat?Sbased products in agricultural and natural resource management. However, most of the emphasis in the past has been in the area of Integrated Pest Management.Irrigation scheduling models that use climate data have been developed by a group of individuals that are usually separate from the state climatology group. It is essential these groups coordinate so that the format of the climate data needed by the irrigation scheduling models are compatible with the format of the data available from state climatologists. Typically, irrigation scheduling models using climate data do not readily input data from outside the state where the model was developed. Models may not accept climate data from other states unless the state climatologist provides a conversion program, which is not one of the objectives or expertise of the state climatologist. Consequently, to conserve manpower resources, it is essential that there be coordination among the developers of irrigation scheduling models to make them easily adopted in all states.
Irrigators tend not to use climate based irrigation scheduling models, possibly because of a lack of user friendliness of the models, lack of trust in the basic assumptions behind the models, and a lack of economic reward perceived by the irrigators if they were to take the time and effort to learn how to use the models. Coordination of extension efforts on the use of the irrigation scheduling models could result in the development of more user friendly models and a better diffusion method of the technology to increase farmers use of irrigation scheduling models. Coordination of on farm demonstrations that verify that the use of irrigation scheduling model can increase irrigation efficiency and yields by proper timing and application of irrigation water could result in increased use of these models and increased water conservation. This is especially important in the conversion to improved irrigation systems, which have the potential to increase yields and irrigation efficiency, but only if farmers know how to manage the system through some form of irrigation scheduling. Currently, climate based irrigation scheduling models are the most effective way to schedule irrigations.
Climate based irrigation scheduling models do not all use the same reference evapotranspiration equation nor do they all use the same growing degree cutoff temperatures when developing crop coefficients to reduce reference evapotranspiration to actual evapotranspiration. Consequently, it is difficult to use crop coefficients developed for one irrigation scheduling model in another irrigation scheduling model. Methods need to be adopted to allow conversion of crop coefficients developed for one model for use in another.
Back to Top