Soil & Water Res., 2013, 8(4):165-171 | DOI: 10.17221/5/2013-SWR

Grid-based simulation of a lateral move irrigation systemOriginal Paper

Sven GRASHEY-JANSEN
Institute of Geography (Physical Geography & Quantitative Methods), University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

A central objective in irrigation science is the improvement of the water use efficiency (WUE). Mostly the focus is laid on improvements and innovations in irrigation technology. The characteristics of soils are often considered to be of secondary importance or totally disregarded. This paper reports on the simulation of a sensor network based irrigation system. The simulation was designed for a lateral move irrigation system with a notional irrigated area of 100 × 200 m. A grid-based network with soil specific calibrated and wireless moisture sensors (SMSN) captures the actual soil water content and calculates the corresponding water tensions simultaneously. The simulation in this paper is presented with two different modes of irrigation: the undifferentiated and evenly distributed irrigation (UDI-mode) and the differentiated precision irrigation (DPI-mode) which is adapted to the soil properties. The UDI-mode has been the most frequently applied practice so far and connected with an uncontrolled application of irrigation water. A supply under or over the real water demand of the plants is the consequence. In the DPI-mode the amount of given water is controlled by the soil water tensions (SWTs) calculated by pedotransfer functions (PTFs).

Keywords: irrigation technology; pedotransfer functions; precision irrigation; soil moisture sensors; soil water tensions; water use efficiency

Published: December 31, 2013  Show citation

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GRASHEY-JANSEN S. Grid-based simulation of a lateral move irrigation system. Soil & Water Res. 2013;8(4):165-171. doi: 10.17221/5/2013-SWR.
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