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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Kimberly, Idaho » Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #59599
Title: MONITORING SOFTWARE FOR POLLUTANT COMPONENTS IN FURROW-IRRIGATION RUNOFF

Author
item LENTZ, RODRICK - UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO
item Sojka, Robert

Submitted to: American Society of Agricultural Engineers Meetings Papers
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/9/1994
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Non-point source pollution from furrow-irrigated agriculture threatens surface water quality throughout the world. For example, sediment or dissolved chemicals contributed by irrigation return-flows can degrade habitats and increase user costs downstream. This particular threat has been fully appreciated only recently, resulting in an increased interest in runoff monitoring. Analysis of runoff data from furrow-irrigation is cumbersome and time consuming. Calibration functions relating measured quantities to desired water-component concentrations must be obtained for each treatment (e.g a calibration function measured relating component volumes to runoff component concentration). It is awkward and tedious to plot or analyze constituent runoff data by treatment. The PASCAL program described here reads data from a text file and derives, displays, and statistically compares calibration functions for treatments or any other user-defined furrow group. It employs the computed or a user-supplied function to calculate infiltration, runoff, and sediment loss for each furrow. In addition, the software computes and plots group-averaged values for inflow, outflow, infiltration, runoff constituent loss, and outflow constituent concentration as a function of irrigation duration.