Irrigation is essential for efficient and sustainable agricultural production especially for arid and semi arid zones. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one of the biggest challenges for agriculture in the coming decades will be to ensure food security for the steadily growing world’s population. Irrigation is one of the most important inputs for an efficient and sustainable agricultural production (Gundogdu et al., 2002).
Management of irrigation system reduces water demand, saving water for other uses and further helps in improving agriculture productivity. Irrigation management is one of the major challenges for the irrigation professionals and managers because it involves multi tasks, multi stakeholders with varying goals. An efficient water management allows optimization of available water, an effective control on the quality of agricultural products further helps in reduction of the environmental impact of irrigation.
Most of the data related to irrigation management is complex, spatially distributed and temporal in nature. The integration of the irrigation data and use in irrigation planning and management has led to introduction of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and other technologies (Su and Wen, 2001; Bioggio and Ding, 2001; Kjelds and Storm, 2001). GIS is very effective tool to provide information to the farmers and irrigation professionals in the form of maps using interpolation. These maps can be easily understood by farmers, planners and specialists for irrigation planning, management and research providing information most effectively and accurately.
ArcGIS is most commonly used GIS application in irrigation and water recourse management projects. The ArcGIS not only allows user in an...
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Chapter 3 (Theoretical Framework) deals with theoretical background about Geographical Information System, ArcGIS and its customization and Visual Basic for Application development environment. This chapter also describes and irrigation water requirement with reference evapotranspiration and crop evapotranspiration.
Chapter 4 (Material and Methodology) describes data with their source and software used during the study. This chapter also gives the description of the methodology used to develop the tool and its application for the output maps.
Chapter 5 (Software Description and Results) gives the general description and feature of the software developed. This chapter also provides output maps produced by the developed tool.
Chapter 6 (Conclusion) presents the conclusion of the study along with limitation and further development of the system.
As Jensen points out, farming and industry accounts for the vast majority of total water usage in the world (477). The increasingly scarce resource is a necessary ingredient when growing food. Technology continuously improves to make it easier for farmers to grow crops while using less water. Scientists at the University of Georgia utilize what they term “variable rate irrigation” to let farmers automate the current systems of irrigation to water only the crops that need it (Gies). This is an example of retrofitting current farms, but there is a new way of farming coming to cities that reuses practically all of its water and stakes claim much less acreage in the process. The future of agriculture belongs to vertical and urban farming. These types of farms reduce the use of water, chemicals (such as pesticides, herbicides and fungicides), soil and space (The Economist). These farms are so cutting edge that they are mostly in the experimental stages. Firms like Famgro farms are testing “stackable” farming systems that can scale with demand, even further reducing waste. Famgro’s stackable farms are ideal for cityscapes where land is at a premium; furthermore, reaping the added benefit of being in close proximity to the customers that they serve. Customers will enjoy high quality, fresh produce at only a slightly
The objective of this lab is to become accustomed to using Logger Pro data collection software and the Lab Pro interface. The ideas of averaging constant data and finding the standard deviation will be introduced. This lab will instruct the use of different tools such as the Linear Fit and Statistics tools in Logger Pro. Another objective is to introduce the construction of tables and graphs in Excel. The software will work cohesively to construct organize data that is collected in the lab.
Agriculture and geography are very closely linked. In our modern civilization with advanced agricultural innovations, geography no longer plays as large of a role. In arid climates, crops can grow with the right irrigation systems and are now much more predictable with pesticides and genetic engineering. In ancient times however, if the landscape wasn’t farmable, it generally stayed that way. Irrigation has been around since 6000 BC but generally depended on the flooding of nearby river systems.
Most of water consumed in China is not rationally used. The cause which intensifies the water shortage in China is water inefficient use. For instance, 65%-70% of Chinese water usage is spent on agricultural needs, but more than half of this amount evaporates percolates and loses (Roberts 2009). Besides, majority of another 20%-25% which is occupied by China’s industry is not recycled (Brown 2008a, 16; Roberts 2009). Obviously, improving water distribution technologies and management quality can be one of the options to reduce the water scarcity in China. There are many different methods of improving the water distribution efficiency. Firstly, irrigation technologies should be improved. Farmers in China may use drip and shrink irrigation methods instead of traditional “surface” ones such as furrow and flood irrigation. Drip irrigation method is used mostly in arid and semi-arid zones and it increases the efficiency of irrigation by transporting the water directly to the roots of irrigated plant. The emitters sprinkle the soil under the roots with water which is introduced to the plant by pipes, diminishing water evaporation, deep percolation and leak. In contrast, fur...
Water shortage in arid and semi-arid regions and declining its availability to a crisis ...
As the empire expanded, there was a need for more farmland, but there was not always a water source available. The Incas grew corn, cotton and squash. Garciasco de la Vega, speaking about the farming in the Incan Empire, said, “The engineers showed great cleverness and skill in supplying water for the crops since only scattered sections of the land could grow corn” (Document 4). Their success with irrigation helped them expand their empire. Without it, it would be more difficult for them to subsist in a growing empire.
The map was developed by the CIPD in conjunction with professionals and organisations around the world and is made up of the following 3 sections:
Geographers plan new communities, decide where new highways should be placed, and establish evacuation plans. Computerized mapping and data analysis is known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a new frontier in geography. Spatial data is gathered on a variety of subjects and input onto a computer. GIS users can create an infinite number of maps by requesting portions of the data to plot.
GIS is an emerging method of data storage and interpretation. GIS is, simply put a database. It is many tables of data organized by one common denominator, location. The data in a GIS system is organized spatially, or by its physical location on the base map. The information that is stored in the database is the location and attributes that exist in that base map, such as streets, highways, water lines, sewers, manholes, properties, and buildings, etc. each of these items don’t just exist in the database, the attributes associated with the item is also stored. A good example of this would be a specific sewer line, from and arbitrary point A to a point B. Ideally, the sewer line would be represented graphically, with a line connecting the two points or something of the like. When one retrieves the information for that line in particular, the attribute data would be shown. This data would include the size of pipe, the pipe material, the upper invert elevation, the downstream invert elevation, the date installed, and any problem history associated with that line. This is the very gist of what a GIS system is.
Above, is a quote from a man recovered from an article of writing back in the ancient Egyptian times. Irrigation is a form of re-routing water, to parts of land that the water is needed, in farming terms. For Example, there are two crops, one crop is getting all the water, and it’s flooding. With irrigation, the farmer will re-route the water towards the other crop, as well as sharing the water with the crop that was being flooded. So now, both crops are getting enough water and they are not flooding nor suffering from drought.
Improvements in the socio-economic patterns in India, China, Brazil and few other developing countries have opened new channels & opportunities for precision agriculture in these countries (Mondal, P. and Basu, M., 2009)”. India is a land of agriculture with large numbers of crops cultivated and the major pulses like wheat, pulses, rice, cotton, maize within top 10 in the world. However, when you take into consideration the ranking on quality wise it does not reach high. Although crops are being grown in India, The ratio of fertilizers used per area and the nutrition needs of the plants are not met. It is almost 3-5 times lesser to what is used in developed countries. With PA, you can achieve this needs of the plants, but studying the crop, soil and terrains. With the recent advancement in ISRO (Indian Satellite Research Organization) launching GPS and the IT revolution has changed the Indian environment making inroads for new scopes in farm sectors. There is also a misinterpretation that these technologies cannot be used in small scale farms. There are few technologies like chlorophyll meter (SPAD) and leaf colour chart (LCC) hand held portable devices to determine the timing of crop and the nutrient content. Government has been supportive in encouraging growers in small community to use GIS systems, and internet to understand the
The findings are then summarised and accordingly stated with the help of standard methodologies which are then concluded providing with the various limitations and the recommendations.
Sandra Postel, on the other hand, has a different opinion than Danielle’s. She proposed that “without increasing water productivity in irrigation, major food-producing regions will not have enough water to sustain crop production”.
The nature of research instruments, the sampling plan and the type of data the research design constitutes the blueprint for the collection, the measurement and analysis of data. It aids the researcher in the allocation of his limited resources by posing crucial choices.
Global warming is one of the main causes, which leads to the lack of water and drought. A drought-like condition exists in most of India’s part. Government of India states that 68% of the country is disposed to the drought, which (consequences are) leads to massive migration of people to more favorable places, famine, conflicts among inhabitants. India is known in the world as one of the biggest producers of water-intensive crops such as rice, sugarcane and wheat. According to a survey done by Grail Research, approximately 82% of total water is used for agricultural consumption and 90% of it is employed for irrigation of rice, wheat and sugarcane (Grail Research, LLC, 2009). There are several solutions which could lead to the decr...