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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Mississippi State, Mississippi » Crop Science Research Laboratory » Genetics and Sustainable Agriculture Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #313669
Title: A farm pond water irrigation management system in Mid-South United States

Author
item Feng, Gary
item OUYANG, YING - Us Forest Service (FS)
item Read, John
item Adeli, Ardeshir
item REGINELLI, DENNIS - Mississippi State Extension Service
item Jenkins, Johnie

Submitted to: Proceedings of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers International (ASABE)
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/2/2015
Publication Date: 7/29/2015
Citation: Feng, G.G., Ouyang, Y., Read, J.J., Adeli, A., Reginelli, D., Jenkins, J.N. 2015. A farm pond water irrigation management system in Mid-South United States. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Conference.New Orleans, LA, July 26-29, 2015.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: In the mid-southern United States, though most states receive more than 1000 mm of annual precipitation, only 20% irrigation is from surface water in this region. The majority of rainfall occurs in fall, winter and spring, but water deficit still exists during crop critical growing season from May to September. Therefore, supplemental irrigation is required to stabilize or improve crop yield and quality. Some regions such as west Mississippi Delta, which pump groundwater for irrigation have seen a severe decline in aquifer level, and will face a serious water shortage for agriculture. Some regions such as eastern Mississippi Blackland Prairie region, groundwater is deep and expensive to pump for irrigation. It is an ideal region to collect on-farm runoff and harvest rainfall during off-crop growing rain season owing to its high precipitation and heavy clay soil. There is an increasing trend of using farm pond impounded water for irrigation. In fact, some regions such as east central Mississippi, more and more irrigation farm ponds have been constructed. There are already over 90% of growers who irrigate their lands by using surface pond water for irrigation. It is necessary to develop an irrigation management tool using pond water for conservation and preservation of water resource and sustainable agriculture in this region. A Farm Pond Water Irrigation Management System (FPWIMS) is being developed with the following three major components: (1) a pond hydrological processes model, (2) an irrigation management model, and (3) three types of databases required by the two models. This model can simulate the diurnal and seasonal hydrological processes, estimate water budget, and predict the amount of water in a pond for irrigation over time. In addition to irrigation management, the tool can also assist designs for pond construction through estimating the ratio of pond size to irrigation area. The irrigation management model can optimize the available water productivity, determine crop water requirement and timing, and distribute the given available pond water to the most profitable crops for the right amount at the right time. The irrigation management tool consists of a soil water balance model which can estimate runoff, percolation, effective precipitation and irrigation, and root zone soil water depletion over time. The tool provides ten methods for calculating evapotranspiration (ET) based on the number of types of available weather data. The ten methods were evaluated and placed in order based on tested accuracy in the region. Three types of databases, soil, weather and crop, are established in the system. The soil database has complete set of measured or compiled then carefully examined critical parameters such as water holding capacity, soil texture, soil moisture at planting, management allowed depletion required by irrigation scheduling. The weather database is comprised of long-term historical weather and ET data which can be analyzed by the tool to predict ET and possible rainfall in the next couple of days. The crop database contains crop coefficients (Kc) for different hybrid corn, soybean and cotton crops, planting and emergence date, maturity, plant population, rooting depth, leaf area index, and characteristics of common cropping system in the region. The Farm Pond Water Irrigation Management System (FPWIMS) has been tested and applied for soybean irrigation management in the western Delta and eastern Blackland Prairie of Mississippi.