Location: Water Management and Conservation Research
2019 Annual Report
Accomplishments
1. Satellite remote sensing quantifies irrigated crop water use in Arizona. Persistent drought and declared water shortages are threatening the sustainability of farms in Central Arizona. Known methods to conserve crop water resources, such as land leveling and use of pressurized irrigation, can be effective management tools; however, accurate water use amounts are lacking, meaning that policy planning and on-farm decision making are difficult. ARS researchers in Maricopa, Arizona, used satellite remote sensing images and water balance models to quantify water use by cotton, wheat, and alfalfa in the Central Arizona Irrigation District. The methods and the values derived from them provide important tools and baseline data for farmers and district managers to assess their current and future irrigation needs.
2. Development of WinSRFR 5 completed. Surface irrigation systems still account for nearly 40% of the irrigated surface in the U.S. Many of those systems are inadequately designed, and as a result, produce large water losses. Performance of those systems can be improved with the assistance of hydraulic analysis tools. ARS researchers in Maricopa, Arizona, completed the development of Version 5 of WinSRFR, a software package for the analysis of surface irrigation systems that is being released to National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the primary user of the software, and to the general public. Key software enhancements include the addition of procedures for modeling furrow infiltration based on physical principles, a module for modeling fertigation events (solute transport), new design options for furrows, and a new module for the estimation of infiltration and hydraulic resistance parameters (inverse solution). Simulation and field studies have validated the usefulness of this infiltration modeling approach.
Review Publications
Kothari, K., Ale, S., Bordovsky, J.P., Thorp, K.R., Porter, D.O., Munster, C.L. 2019. Simulation of efficient irrigation management strategies for grain sorghum production over different climate variability classes. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 170:49-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.12.011.
Thorp, K.R., Thompson, A.L., Harders, S.J., French, A.N., Ward, R.W. 2018. High-throughput phenotyping of crop water use efficiency via multispectral drone imagery and a daily soil water balance model. Remote Sensing. 10(11):1682. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111682.
Chen, X., Thorp, K.R., Ouyang, Z., Hou, Y., Li, Y. 2019. Energy consumption due to groundwater pumping for irrigation in the North China Plain. Science of the Total Environment. 669:1033-1042.
Thompson, A.L., Thorp, K.R., Andrade-Sanchez, P., Conley, M.M., Heun, J.T., Dyer, J.M., White, J.W. 2018. Deploying a proximal sensing cart to identify drought-adaptive traits in upland cotton for high-throughput phenotyping. Frontiers in Plant Science. 9:507. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.00507.
Lamsal, A., Welch, S.M., White, J.W., Thorp, K.R., Bello, N. 2018. Estimating parametric phenotypes that determine anthesis date in Zea mays: Challenges in combining ecophysiological models with genetics. PLoS One. 13(4):e0195841. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195841.
Thompson, A.L., Thorp, K.R., Conley, M.M., French, A.N., Andrade-Sanchez, P., Pauli, D. 2019. Comparing nadir and multi-angle view sensor technologies for measuring in-field plant height of upland cotton. Remote Sensing of Environment. 11:700-719. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11060700.
Kimball, B., Boote, K., Hatfield, J.L., Ahuja, L.R., Stockle, C., Archontoulis, S., Caron, C., Basso, B., Bertuzzi, P., Constantin, J., Deryng, D., Dumont, B., Durand, J., Ewert, F., Gaiser, T., Gayler, S., Hoffmann, M.P., Jiang, Q., Kim, S., Lizaso, J., Moulin, S., Nednel, C., Parker, P., Palosuo, T., Priesack, E., Qi, Z., Srivastava, A., Tommaso, S., Tau, F., Thorp, K.R., Timlin, D.J., Twine, T.E., Webber, H., Willaume, M., Williams, K. 2019. Simulation of maize evapotranspiration: an inter-comparison among 29 maize models. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 271:264-284.
Bronson, K.F., Hunsaker, D.J., Thorp, K.R. 2019. Nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation effects on seed yield and oil in camelina. Agronomy Journal. 111(4):1712-1719. https://doi.org/10.2134/agronj2018.10.0644.
Hunsaker, D.J., Elshikha, D.M., Bronson, K.F. 2019. High guayule rubber production with subsurface drip irrigation in the US desert southwest. Agricultural Water Management. 220:1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2019.04.016.
French, A.N., Hunsaker, D.J., Bounoua, L., Karnieli, A., Luckett, W., Strand, B. 2018. Remote sensing of evapotranspiration over the central Arizona irrigation and drainage district, U.S.A. Agronomy Journal. 8(12):278.
Guzman-Rojo, D.P., Bautista, E., Gonzalez-Trinidad, J., Bronson, K.F. 2018. Variability of furrow infiltration and estimated infiltration parameters in a macroporous soil. Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering. 145(2):04018041. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)IR.1943-4774.0001366.