A Web-Based Advisory Service for Optimum Irrigation Management

The optimum (profit maximizing) level of irrigation water use is usually less than the yield maximizing level, particularly when water has an associated opportunity cost. However, the amount of analysis required to implement a profit maximizing strategy is usually too time consuming to be practical for most farmers. Furthermore the practical operational constraints imposed on typical irrigation practices are usually too complicated to be fully encapsulated in software. Oregon State University and the NRCS have cooperatively developed a web-based, user-directed application for optimum irrigation management. This system has already completed two years of field trails and has a demonstrated capacity for delivering conventional irrigation schedules. The system is now entering a second phase of development where we are adding new analytical tools that enable easy generation of optimum irrigation schedules. This system, known as Irrigation Management Online (IMO), explicitly analyzes irrigation efficiency and yield reductions for deficit irrigation, performs simultaneous, conjunctive scheduling for all fields in the farm that share a limited water supply, and employs both ET and soil moisture measurements in a Bayesian decision analysis to enhance the accuracy of the irrigation schedules. To mitigate the complexities of irrigation constraints the system has been designed so that the user is an integral part of the irrigation optimization procedure.