Verifiable Water Use Inventory Using ICT …
23
systems to irrigate an orange orchard and greenhouse tomatoes for a crop season is
described next.
3.1.1 Irrigation Management of an Orange Orchard
The depth of the roots depends on the crop, its state of development, type of soil,
presence of tillage sole, among other factors. After an in situ examination of the soil
and root system of each crop, sensors were installed at 3 levels in increasing order
of depth: surface layer, zone with the highest concentration of roots and the depth at
which only a small fraction of the roots reach, where high moisture contents would
indicate water leakage by percolation and therefore inefficient use of irrigation water.
In the orange orchard described in Sect. 2.1 dedicated to the “Navelina” variety,
the amount of water used by the crop during the 2019/2020 campaign has been
analyzed.
As the end of the harvest of this variety is in the middle of January, it has been
considered that the campaign of the crop coincides with the year 2019. Therefore,
the programming of the irrigation water and the effective rainfall calculated between
January 1, 2019 and January 1, 2020 will be used later in the inventory of the water
footprint of this crop.
In the year 2019, the gross precipitation (P) recorded by the NAE to the farm was
318 mm.
The data collected by the soil moisture sensors on a daily basis has been used
to determine the amount of rainwater available to the crop (CWU green ) that can be
stored in the soil, as well as the daily soil water balance. Since the data provided by
these devices is used in equations involving the water-holding capacity of the soil,
it is essential to determine the texture of the soil. In the case of the orange crop, the
soil of the study plot was sandy loam. The moisture content at field capacity (FC) is
0.28 m
3 /m
3 and the permanent wilting point is 0.1 m
3 /m
3 .
Applying the methodology proposed in this work, the irrigation schedule was
determined throughout the campaign, comparing it later with the actual irrigation
program and consumption of the farm. Weather forecasts from AEMET OpenData
and the website eltiempo.es are used to apply the methodology.
In this case, the application during the campaign was conditioned by the water
allowance of the campaign (5000 m
3 /ha). Two irrigation scenarios were simulated.
The first one (Fig. 5) corresponds to the model strategy with an irrigation strategy of
full satisfaction of irrigation needs (FIR). The second scenario (Fig. 6) is a simulation
of irrigation programming applying a controlled deficit irrigation strategy (RDI).
Figure 7 shows the actual management of irrigation on the farm during the study
campaign.
In this case, x = 0.2 has been defined in Eq. (7) to calculate the soil moisture
deficit. The supply of irrigation water is from Fuente Palmera Irrigation district,
where irrigation time is fixed between 00:00 h and 08:00 h from Monday to Friday
and has no limit on the weekends (24 h).
23
systems to irrigate an orange orchard and greenhouse tomatoes for a crop season is
described next.
3.1.1 Irrigation Management of an Orange Orchard
The depth of the roots depends on the crop, its state of development, type of soil,
presence of tillage sole, among other factors. After an in situ examination of the soil
and root system of each crop, sensors were installed at 3 levels in increasing order
of depth: surface layer, zone with the highest concentration of roots and the depth at
which only a small fraction of the roots reach, where high moisture contents would
indicate water leakage by percolation and therefore inefficient use of irrigation water.
In the orange orchard described in Sect. 2.1 dedicated to the “Navelina” variety,
the amount of water used by the crop during the 2019/2020 campaign has been
analyzed.
As the end of the harvest of this variety is in the middle of January, it has been
considered that the campaign of the crop coincides with the year 2019. Therefore,
the programming of the irrigation water and the effective rainfall calculated between
January 1, 2019 and January 1, 2020 will be used later in the inventory of the water
footprint of this crop.
In the year 2019, the gross precipitation (P) recorded by the NAE to the farm was
318 mm.
The data collected by the soil moisture sensors on a daily basis has been used
to determine the amount of rainwater available to the crop (CWU green ) that can be
stored in the soil, as well as the daily soil water balance. Since the data provided by
these devices is used in equations involving the water-holding capacity of the soil,
it is essential to determine the texture of the soil. In the case of the orange crop, the
soil of the study plot was sandy loam. The moisture content at field capacity (FC) is
0.28 m
3 /m
3 and the permanent wilting point is 0.1 m
3 /m
3 .
Applying the methodology proposed in this work, the irrigation schedule was
determined throughout the campaign, comparing it later with the actual irrigation
program and consumption of the farm. Weather forecasts from AEMET OpenData
and the website eltiempo.es are used to apply the methodology.
In this case, the application during the campaign was conditioned by the water
allowance of the campaign (5000 m
3 /ha). Two irrigation scenarios were simulated.
The first one (Fig. 5) corresponds to the model strategy with an irrigation strategy of
full satisfaction of irrigation needs (FIR). The second scenario (Fig. 6) is a simulation
of irrigation programming applying a controlled deficit irrigation strategy (RDI).
Figure 7 shows the actual management of irrigation on the farm during the study
campaign.
In this case, x = 0.2 has been defined in Eq. (7) to calculate the soil moisture
deficit. The supply of irrigation water is from Fuente Palmera Irrigation district,
where irrigation time is fixed between 00:00 h and 08:00 h from Monday to Friday
and has no limit on the weekends (24 h).