IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v98y2011i4p697-704.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Landscape irrigation scheduling efficiency and adequacy by various control technologies

Author

Listed:
  • McCready, M.S.
  • Dukes, M.D.

Abstract

Automated residential irrigation systems tend to result in higher water use than non-automated systems. Increasing the scheduling efficiency of an automated irrigation system provides the opportunity to conserve water resources while maintaining good landscape quality. Control technologies available for reducing over-irrigation include evapotranspiration (ET) based controllers, soil moisture sensor (SMS) controllers, and rain sensors (RS). The purpose of this research was to evaluate the capability of these control technologies to schedule irrigation compared to a soil water balance model based on the Irrigation Association (IA) Smart Water Application Technologies (SWAT) testing protocol. Irrigation adequacy and scheduling efficiency were calculated in 30-day running totals to determine the amount of over- or under-irrigation for each control technology based on the IA SWAT testing protocol. A time-based treatment with irrigation 2 days/week and no rain sensor (NRS) was established as a comparison. In general, the irrigation adequacy ratings (measure of under-irrigation) for the treatments were higher during the fall months of testing than the spring months due to lower ET resulting in lower irrigation demand. Scheduling efficiency values (measure of over-irrigation) decreased for all treatments when rainfall increased. During the rainy period of this testing, total rainfall was almost double reference evapotranspiration (ETo) while in the remaining three testing periods the opposite was true. The 30-day irrigation adequacy values, considering all treatments, varied during the testing periods by 0-68 percentile points. Looking at only one 30-day testing period, as is done in the IA SWAT testing protocol, will not fully capture the performance of an irrigation controller. Scheduling efficiency alone was not a good indicator of controller performance. The amount of water applied and the timing of application were both important to maintaining acceptable turfgrass quality and receiving good irrigation adequacy and scheduling efficiency scores.

Suggested Citation

  • McCready, M.S. & Dukes, M.D., 2011. "Landscape irrigation scheduling efficiency and adequacy by various control technologies," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(4), pages 697-704, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:98:y:2011:i:4:p:697-704
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-3774(10)00365-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCready, M.S. & Dukes, M.D. & Miller, G.L., 2009. "Water conservation potential of smart irrigation controllers on St. Augustinegrass," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1623-1632, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fan, Yubing & McCann, Laura E., 2015. "Households' Adoption of Drought Tolerant Plants: An Adaptation to Climate Change?," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205544, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Snyder, R.L. & Pedras, C. & Montazar, A. & Henry, J.M. & Ackley, D., 2015. "Advances in ET-based landscape irrigation management," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 187-197.
    3. Marjan Aziz & Madeeha Khan & Naveeda Anjum & Muhammad Sultan & Redmond R. Shamshiri & Sobhy M. Ibrahim & Siva K. Balasundram & Muhammad Aleem, 2022. "Scientific Irrigation Scheduling for Sustainable Production in Olive Groves," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-14, April.
    4. Barton, Louise & Flottmann, Samuel J. & Stefanovia, Katia T. & Colmer, Timothy D., 2020. "Approaches to scheduling water allocations to kikuyugrass grown on a water repellent soil in a drying-climate," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    5. Sara Komenda & Martha C. Monroe, 2023. "Clues in the Data: The Role of Education in Adopting Technology That Enhances Sustainable Lifestyle Choices," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-15, May.
    6. Wanjiru, Evan M. & Xia, Xiaohua, 2015. "Energy-water optimization model incorporating rooftop water harvesting for lawn irrigation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 521-531.
    7. Khachatryan, Hayk & Suh, Dong Hee & Xu, Wan & Useche, Pilar & Dukes, Michael D., 2019. "Towards sustainable water management: Preferences and willingness to pay for smart landscape irrigation technologies," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 33-41.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Silva, Marcos Dornelas Freitas Machado e & Calijuri, Maria Lúcia & Sales, Francisco José Ferreira de & Souza, Mauro Henrique Batalha de & Lopes, Lucas Sampaio, 2014. "Integration of technologies and alternative sources of water and energy to promote the sustainability of urban landscapes," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 71-81.
    2. Migliaccio, Kati W. & Schaffer, Bruce & Crane, Jonathan H. & Davies, Frederick S., 2010. "Plant response to evapotranspiration and soil water sensor irrigation scheduling methods for papaya production in south Florida," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 97(10), pages 1452-1460, October.
    3. M. Safdar Munir & Imran Sarwar Bajwa & M. Asif Naeem & Bushra Ramzan, 2018. "Design and Implementation of an IoT System for Smart Energy Consumption and Smart Irrigation in Tunnel Farming," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-18, December.
    4. Cardenas-Lailhacar, B. & Dukes, M.D., 2010. "Precision of soil moisture sensor irrigation controllers under field conditions," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 97(5), pages 666-672, May.
    5. Sara Komenda & Martha C. Monroe, 2023. "Clues in the Data: The Role of Education in Adopting Technology That Enhances Sustainable Lifestyle Choices," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-15, May.
    6. Snyder, R.L. & Pedras, C. & Montazar, A. & Henry, J.M. & Ackley, D., 2015. "Advances in ET-based landscape irrigation management," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 187-197.
    7. Khachatryan, Hayk & Suh, Dong Hee & Xu, Wan & Useche, Pilar & Dukes, Michael D., 2019. "Towards sustainable water management: Preferences and willingness to pay for smart landscape irrigation technologies," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 33-41.
    8. Chen, Xiaoping & Qi, Zhiming & Gui, Dongwei & Sima, Matthew W. & Zeng, Fanjiang & Li, Lanhai & Li, Xiangyi & Gu, Zhe, 2020. "Evaluation of a new irrigation decision support system in improving cotton yield and water productivity in an arid climate," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:98:y:2011:i:4:p:697-704. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.