Use this form to estimate water use by your crop in the Huntley-Worden Irrigation District. The graph generated will display daily water use from the date you enter until the current date.

This tool has been designed primarily to help 'flood irrigators' schedule irrigation events.

Background

Proper irrigation scheduling can help increase profits while decreasing negative effects to the environment such as off-site movement of agricultural chemicals, leaching of fertilizer below the root zone, and overly wet conditions that can lead to increased disease incidence. This ET estimation tool has been developed to help irrigators make more informed decisions as to when to apply the 'next' irrigation.

Evapo-transipiration (ET) is an estimate of the amount of water that is transpired by the crop AND evaporated from the soil surface. Early in the season when the crop is just established, evaporation is the primary loss. As the crop canopy develops, and the crop enters a phase of rapid growth, transpiration becomes the dominant use of water. Early attempts at estimating ET primarily used devices such as evaporative pans. These provide a reasonable estimate of the energy driving evaporation, but they lack the ability to model how plants transpire. By measuring inputs such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and net radiation, a better estimate of ET can be obtained.

At the Southern Agricultural Research Center, we have an automated weather station that tracks these parameters on a minute by minute basis. Using these inputs, a real-time estimate of ET specific to each crop is generated.

NRCS Web Soil Survey | My WSS Tutorial | FAO paper 56 | ARS Kimberly, ID

Return to regular view	Text-only	Updated: April 17 2009