Irrigation is the controlled application of water for agricultural purposes through

manmade systems to supply water requirements not satisfied by rainfall. Crop irrigation
is vital throughout the world in order to provide the world's ever-growing populations
with enough food. Many different irrigation methods are used worldwide, including:

 Center-Pivot: Automated sprinkler irrigation achieved by automatically rotating

the sprinkler pipe or boom, supplying water to the sprinkler heads or nozzles, as
a radius from the center of the field to be irrigated. Water is delivered to the
center or pivot point of the system. The pipe is supported above the crop by
towers at fixed spacing and propelled by pneumatic, mechanical, hydraulic, or
electric power on wheels or skids in fixed circular paths at uniform angular
speeds. Water is applied at a uniform rate by progressive increase of nozzle size
from the pivot to the end of the line. The depth of water applied is determined by
the rate of travel of the system. Single units are ordinarily about 1,250 to 1,300
feet long and irrigate about a 130-acre circular area.
 Drip: A planned irrigation system in which water is applied directly to the Root
Zone of plants by means of applicators (orifices, emitters, porous tubing,
perforated pipe, etc.) operated under low pressure with the applicators being
placed either on or below the surface of the ground.
 Flood: The application of irrigation water where the entire surface of the soil is
covered by ponded water.
 Furrow: A partial surface flooding method of irrigation normally used with clean-
tilled crops where water is applied in furrows or rows of sufficient capacity to
contain the designed irrigation system.
 Gravity: Irrigation in which the water is not pumped but flows and is distributed by
gravity.
 Rotation: A system by which irrigators receive an allotted quantity of water, not a
continuous rate, but at stated intervals.
 Sprinkler: A planned irrigation system in which water is applied by means of
perforated pipes or nozzles operated under pressure so as to form a spray
pattern.
 Sub-irrigation: Applying irrigation water below the ground surface either by raising
the water table within or near the root zone or by using a buried perforated or
porous pipe system that discharges directly into the root zone.
 Traveling Gun: Sprinkler irrigation system consisting of a single large nozzle that
rotates and is self-propelled. The name refers to the fact that the base is on
wheels and can be moved by the irrigator or affixed to a guide wire.
 Supplemental: Irrigation to ensure increased crop production in areas where
rainfall normally supplies most of the moisture needed.
 Surface: Irrigation where the soil surface is used as a conduit, as in furrow and
border irrigation as opposed to sprinkler irrigation or sub-irrigation.

This information is courtesy of the Nevada Division of Water Planning.

https://water.usgs.gov/edu/irquicklook.html
THE EFFECT OF IRRIGATION AND LARGE DAMS ON THE BURDEN OF MALARIA ON GLOBAL AND REGIONAL SCALE Report
prepared for the WHO commissioned study Burden of water-related vector-borne diseases: An analysis of the fraction
attributable to components of water resources development and management. Based on this report, an article was
published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (Am J Tr Med Hyg 72(4), 2005: 392-406).

Water is a finite but crucial resource. In most river basins around the world, water is diverted for
industrial, municipal and domestic consumption. It’s also a critical component of wetlands and other
natural ecosystems that are of tremendous value to society. Worldwide, the bulk of water use is tied
to agriculture – it accounts for approximately 66% of water diverted from natural sources for human
use and 85% of water consumption. In the arid western United States, it’s not uncommon for
irrigation to represent 75%-90% of all diversions.

Historically, much of the development that’s made these diversions possible in the US was subsidized
by the federal government. This, together with water rights mechanisms that tend to preserve
agriculture’s favored access to the water supply, has made water relatively inexpensive for agriculture.
Few farmers have had much incentive to achieve greater efficiencies in their use of water for
irrigation. As a result, the amount of water diverted for irrigation is about two to three times as much
as is needed for crop production. On average, more than half of the water diverted for irrigation
percolates into the groundwater or returns to surface streams without watering crops.
Water likely won’t flow as freely forever. Hadley Paul Garland, CC BY-SA

4.1 Globally, about 40% of the world’s total food supply comes from irrigated land; in the US, the
irrigated fraction of our agricultural land has reached 18%, but this relatively small area produced half
the total crop value. As the Earth’s population grows, demand for food will also grow. Only a tiny
minority of the required increasein food production can come from expanding development of arable
land, or by increasing the number and types of crops grown per year. The remaining must be met
via yield increases and better water-use efficiency.

And as population increases, the demand for water for non-agricultural purposes will also grow.
World water demand is projected to increase by 55% between 2000 and 2050, and most of this
increase will come from manufacturing, electricity production, and urban and domestic use. So in a
drier world, getting the amount of water used by irrigation under control is a necessity. New
technologies might go a long way toward helping us reach that goal.
Irrigation water that doesn’t make it to the crop’s roots is wasted. Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Kay Ledbetter, CC BY-NC-ND

Using water or losing water?

Irrigation can “lose” water in several ways. Water can seep out of reservoirs or transmission canals
before it ever gets to the field. After water is applied to the crop in the field, some of it can percolate
into the groundwater system, where it’s no longer available to the roots of the crop, or it might run off
the field altogether. Water losses that happen in the field are called “on-farm” losses. Total losses,
including seepage from reservoirs, canals and so on, are called “system” loses.

Over the past 50 years, several technologies have been developed to decrease on-farm irrigation
losses. Precision land-leveling uses laser-guided equipment to level the field so that water will flow
uniformly into the soil, not run down any little hills or collect in little gullies. It makes it easier to limit
the amount of water that seeps beneath where the roots of the crop can reach.
Micro-subsurface drip irrigation applies water beneath the surface, increasing efficiency. US Department of Agriculture, CC BY

Compared to older, conventional furrow and flood application technologies, center pivot and other
sprinkler methodologies and drip irrigation systems improve the uniformity of water application,
reducing the amount of water lost to deeper percolation or runoff from the field. They’re expensive,
though, and are done largely to reduce the costs of other inputs to production, such as labor. And they
don’t necessarily result in significant improvements in overall efficiency, since they don’t address the
losses that happen during storage, transmission and distribution of irrigation water.
More data means more efficient water use. Different spectral band images, like this false-color infrared view of a field, can be combined to provide high-
resolution information about surface temperature, water use, plant nutritional status, soil moisture and so forth. Mac McKee, CC BY-NC-ND

Pinpointing water needs and availability

Monitoring and information technologies are emerging that show promise for reducing water losses
at both the system and farm levels.

For example, it’s now possible to use a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system to
provide precise, integrated control over an entire irrigation system, in real time. A SCADA system
automatically measures the amount of water available in reservoirs, quantities of water flowing in
canals, and amounts of water being diverted onto fields. SCADA systems also can be used to easily
and remotely control releases from reservoirs, diversions into canals and so forth. The users of a
SCADA system – typically reservoir and canal operators, but also individual farmers – can easily see
where all the water is and how it’s being used, and they can make better decisions for what to do next
with respect to releases and diversions. There are several successful examples of such systems,
especially those based in internet communications and display of information.
Relatively few farmers or irrigation system operators currently use remote sensing as a source of
information to reduce losses and improve irrigation efficiency. But this is likely to change as the cost
of newly emerging technologies declines and as the information they produce becomes more readily
available.

A farmer can access water stress information for an individual field, even via smartphone. Alfonso Torres-Rua, CC BY-NC-ND

For example, it is possible now to use satellite imagery to estimate quantities of water used in
individual irrigated fields almost anywhere in the world. Such a system, developed here at the Utah
Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University, is now available in the Lower Sevier Basin of
Utah. It is a website that allows irrigators to see a season-long summary of water use and the soil
moisture status of their crop. It allows individual farmers to monitor water consumption within a field
and do a better job of planning future irrigation timing and quantities. The system also allows canal
and reservoir operators to monitor total water use in the areas served and better anticipate future
irrigation demands for the entire system.
AggieAir UAS aircraft and launcher. Drones can be used for remote sensing of crop water use, soil moisture, and crop chlorophyll and nitrogen status. Mac
McKee, CC BY-NC-ND

An exciting technology that’s in its infancy is the use of small unmanned autonomous systems (UAS)
– or, more commonly, “drones” – to monitor agricultural systems, acquire scientific imagery and
provide information for the operation of irrigation systems. Drones can also support more efficient
fertilizer applications, weed and pest management, and harvesting. An example is the AggieAir UAS
we’ve developed; we’re researching new methods to measureagricultural water use at very high spatial
resolution: 15 centimeters (6 inches), as opposed to the coarse, 30-meter resolution of Landsat
satellite-based monitoring.
AggieAir imagery can be used to derive estimates of daily water use of a crop – here grape plants in a vineyard – at very high spatial resolution. Mac
McKee, CC BY-NC-ND

If drone technologies can be made affordable, they could potentially provide very valuable
information about when and where to apply precise quantities of water to the crop. Farmers with the
right irrigation technology could use this information to accurately apply irrigation water at varying
rates throughout the field rather than the same rate everywhere, which can lead to waste.

Managing in the future

As water demand increases, the competition for a fixed water supply will become more difficult to
manage, especially in arid and semi-arid parts of the world and places where populations will grow
rapidly. Since water use in irrigated agriculture is generally very inefficient, and since the economic
value of water for agriculture is typically much lower that it is for cities and industry, there will be a
natural trend to reduce water allocation to agriculture in favor of other uses. It’s important for water
managers and policymakers to understand these trade-offs and how alternative schemes for water
allocation will have economic, environmental and social impacts.

Will a drier future mean farming – and irrigating – in conditions like those currently in Saudi Arabia? NASA, CC BY-NC

As climate change increases the uncertainty in future water supplies, water management institutions
will need to operate with greater flexibility in order to respond effectively to shifts in both water
demands and supplies. Remote sensing and information technologies will be two tools they can use to
help fit agricultural uses into the larger, more complex total water puzzle.

http://theconversation.com/technologies-will-tackle-irrigation-inefficiencies-in-agricultures-drier-
future-40601