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ARS Home » Plains Area » Bushland, Texas » Conservation and Production Research Laboratory » Soil and Water Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #400070
Research Project: Dryland and Irrigated Crop Management Under Limited Water Availability and Drought

Location: Soil and Water Management Research

Title: Bushland crop growth, yield, ET, energy and water balance, and weather database: The Bushland weighing lysimeter datasets

Author
item Evett, Steven - Steve
item Marek, Gary
item Copeland, Karen
item Ruthardt, Brice
item Colaizzi, Paul
item Brauer, David

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/29/2022
Publication Date: 11/7/2022
Citation: Evett, S.R., Marek, G.W., Copeland, K.S., Ruthardt, B.B., Colaizzi, P.D., Brauer, D.K. 2022. Bushland crop growth, yield, ET, energy and water balance, and weather database: The Bushland weighing lysimeter datasets [abstract]. 2022 ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting, November 6-9, 2022, Baltimore, MD. Paper No. 64-1.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Accurate estimation of crop evapotranspiration (ET) is important for effective irrigation scheduling to improve crop water productivity, irrigation scheme management, long term water resource planning and management, and for use in crop simulation models to improve accuracy of yield estimates. However, all crop ET estimation methods must be tested against ground truth – ET as measured by mass balance in crop fields – and improved so as to estimate ET as accurately as possible. Mass balance measurement of ET depends on solving the soil water balance in which ET is the sum of the change of water stored in the soil profile to well below the root zone, irrigation, precipitation, the sum of any runon and runoff, and any soil water flux into or out of the soil profile. Effective means of measuring the profile change in storage include the neutron probe and large weighing lysimeters. The USDA ARS weighing lysimeter team at Bushland, Texas, determined ET of crops from 1987 to the present using both weighing lysimeters and the neutron probe. Crop studied include alfalfa, cotton, maize for grain, sorghum, soybean, sunflower, and winter wheat. Along with those data, the team obtained data on crop growth and yield, weather, and irrigation applied. These data are presented, along with cropping calendars for each season, as machine readable files available to the public via the USDA ARS National Agriculture Library (NAL) Ag Data Commons internet site. The cropping calendars contain dates of important field operations, including dates, amounts, and kinds of fertilizers and pesticides applied. The weather data include daily sums and averages as well as 15-minute mean data for all days of the year, and include solar irradiance, air temperature and humidity, wind speed, air pressure, and precipitation. Some seasons of the Bushland data have already been used by Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) modeling teams, the OPENET team, and several universities for projects as varied as testing and improvement of eddy covariance methods of ET estimation, remote sensing based ET estimation, and crop model testing and improvement.