Agricultural Water Management: A A A B C
Agricultural Water Management: A A A B C
Agricultural Water Management: A A A B C
Temporal and spatial variations of irrigation water use for commercial corn T
fields in Central Nebraska
Ivo Zution Gonçalvesa,*, Mesfin M. Mekonnena, Christopher M.U. Nealea, Isidro Camposb,
Michael R. Nealec
a
University of Nebraska, Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, United States
b
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Instituto de Desarrollo Regional, Spain
c
Colorado State University, United States
A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T
Keywords: The increasing pressure on water resources in Nebraska-US and other agricultural areas requires the im-
Satellite imagery plementation of innovative tools and solutions for the governance of water resources and the analysis of water
Basal crop coefficient use efficiency. In this vein, this paper presents the application of a remote sensing based soil water balance for
Water productivity the study of water use in agricultural areas. The specific objectives were the identification of the temporal and
spatial behavior of the irrigation water use based on the quantification of the water use deviation (irrigation
water applied minus irrigation water requirements), as the main indicator and the comparative analysis of the
irrigation productivity (crop yield under irrigated field minus crop yield under rainfed condition per volume of
water applied by irrigation), WPi, water productivity (harvestable grain per total volume of water applied
considering precipitation plus irrigation), WP, and finally water productivity based on evapotranspiration
(harvested grain per total volume of water evapotranspired), WPET, in the various management zones analyzed.
Additionally, we examined the impact of soil types, local weather and irrigation system (center pivot and furrow
irrigation) on these indicators. The study was carried out in three Natural Resources District (Tri-Basin, Central
Platte and Lower Niobrara) across Central Nebraska for the period 2004–2012 and comprised over 2000 irri-
gated corn fields per year. Crop water requirements were estimated using the reflectance-based crop coefficient
approach developed in previous research (see Campos et al., 2017) and the field data were reported for each field
monitored through cropland data layer by National Agricultural Statistics Service of USDA. The difference be-
tween modeled irrigation water requirements and field level irrigation application was significant (p < 0.001)
being the water use deviation in generally positive (over irrigation). These results were consistently higher for
furrow irrigated fields during the whole analyzed period, reaching up to three times more water applied com-
pared to the required amount. This was expected as surface irrigation systems typically require a higher ap-
plication depth. This trend changed for the central pivot irrigated fields depending on the climatic conditions,
especially in dry years. The analysis of the water use deviation with respect to soil types and weather conditions
revealed that the water use deviation is not justified by the biophysical conditions alone. The estimated values of
WP and WPi for furrow system was lower compared to center pivot in both NRD’s reaching the maximum value
of 1.37 kg m-3 and 3.06 kg m-3 for WP and WPi in Tri-basin respectively for center pivot. In general, the results
suggested potential to improve water management in these NRDs in Central Nebraska and reduce pumping
potentially saving groundwater resources for drought years and other uses monitoring soil type, weather data
and switching to sprinklers system.
1. Introduction 12 Mg ha-1, up 1 % over 2016 yields being the number one state in
irrigated area in the US, with almost 60 % of the fields under irrigation
Nebraska-US (NE) harvested in 2017, nearly 3,800,000 ha of corn with an approximate area of 3.4 million hectares (USDA, 2018). Water
for grain (over 95 % of total planted corn area) with an average yield of resources to supply this irrigation demand is mainly pumped from the
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: izutiongoncalves2@unl.edu (I.Z. Gonçalves), mmekonnen2@unl.edu (M.M. Mekonnen), cneale@nebraska.edu (C.M.U. Neale),
isidro.campos-rodriguez@ec.europa.eu (I. Campos), mrneale@gmail.com (M.R. Neale).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2019.105924
Received 1 May 2019; Received in revised form 8 November 2019; Accepted 11 November 2019
Available online 22 November 2019
0378-3774/ Published by Elsevier B.V.
I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
underlying High Plains Aquifer. Nebraska has more than 100 thousand reasons and the impact of existing water management practices on crop
active irrigation wells and every decade ten thousand wells are added yield. Additional analyses considered the possible effect of soil types,
increasing the pressure on the freshwater resources becoming one the weather conditions, and irrigation systems in the deviations detected.
most intensive irrigated regions the world. Although Nebraska is con- The strength of the results obtained relies on the unique and extensive
sidered a groundwater-rich state and the ground water levels are fairly database analyzed, including pumpinn records and in-situ yield data for
stable, the total water stored in the High Plains aquifer, which is also a representative sample of each NRD and for a long study period, in-
present in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas, has been declining cluding dry and wet weather conditions and considering two different
over the recent years (Steward and Andrew, 2016). The local water types of irrigation systems (center pivot and furrow irrigation systems).
authorities in Nebraska are the Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) The innovative aspects of the current study is thus, the use of net irri-
(https://www.nrdnet.org/) and the main tool for the management of gation requirement derived from remote sensing combined with mea-
the water resources at the NRD scale is water allocations based on sured field level irrigation application rate to compare and identify
policies limiting water use for irrigation (Kelly, 2010). fields that apply above the average level of irrigation. In addition, the
The optimization of water use in irrigated agriculture has an im- study tries to identify the potential contribution of difference in soil
portant role facing the economic and environmental challenges of types, irrigation systems, and climate to the large variation in irrigation
guaranteeing profitability of the agricultural activity and the sustain- application rate among fields within the same NRD and across the three
ability of freshwater resources. This context requires the estimation of NRDs.
indicators of water use and efficiency for the implementation of
benchmarking analysis or comparative studies, identifying the in- 2. Material and methods
efficiencies of the systems as a first step toward the proposition of so-
lutions. Previous studies analyzed the performance of water manage- 2.1. Locations of sites and characterization
ment in terms of the relative water supply (RWS) considering the ratio
between applied water by irrigation and rainfall to crop water demand This research was carried out using data collected from irrigated
or related indicators. Along this line, Droogers and Bastiaanssen (2002) corn fields in three NRD (Lower Niobrara, Central Platte, and Tri-Basin)
and Karatas et al. (2009) analyzed the irrigation performance at the in Nebraska (Midwestern United States), Fig. 1.
scale of irrigation scheme in Turkey. Similar studies had been published According to Köppen climate types (Peel et al., 2007), all three
by Lorite et al. (2004), in Shenkut (2015) and Gibson et al. (2018). NRDs have a humid continental climate with hot-summer and cold
Another important indicator, widely analyzed in the scientific lit- winter (Thot > 10 °C and Tcold ≤ 0 °C) with the coldest month in
erature, is the water productivity that defines the relationship between January and the hottest in July. Precipitation varies widely across
net benefits from the crop and the amount of water required to produce Nebraska, from a low of 400 mm in Western Nebraska to a high of
those benefits (Molden et al., 2010). For biophysical water productivity, 800 mm in Eastern Nebraska. The average precipitation at the ap-
it is the amount of water used for producing a given quantity of crop, proximate longitude of all three NRDs is around 600 mm annually.
generally yield. Water productivity is mostly expressed by either eva- Considering the three NRD’s, with respect to regulation, only Tri-Basin
potranspiration as a measurement of water consumption by plants or by is under an irrigation water allocation of 685.8 mm/3 years.
the total amount of water applied to the field, including soil stored Accord to National Cooperative Soil Survey of USDA (USDA-NCSS,
water at sowing time, plus irrigation and precipitation registered during 2017), the soil series in Lower Niobrara is typically very deep, and well
the growing season. Some analyses have already demonstrated the drained. Central Platte presents Gibbon is also very deep but, somewhat
impact of the farmer’s water management, soil type and weather con- from poorly drained to well drained, moderately permeable soils while
ditions on the water productivity to maize in Nebraska. Carr et al. Tri-Basin has mostly the very deep, well drained soils.
(2016) found that mainly due to large amounts of irrigation used in
Central Nebraska, the water productivity was not at an optimal level. 2.2. Irrigation requirements estimation based on remote sensing
According to Grassini et al. (2011), applied irrigation was 41 % less
under pivot than under surface irrigation. Simulation analysis showed A possible line of analysis is the estimation of the irrigation water
that up to 32 % of the annual water volume allocated to irrigated maize requirements, defined as the water that must be supplied through irri-
in the region could be saved by switching current surface systems to gation to satisfy crop water demand, leaching and miscellaneous water
pivot. One of the most critical causes of low application efficiency in supply that it is not provided by stored soil water and precipitation that
furrow irrigation system is the need to apply larger volumes of water to infiltrates the soil (Jensen et al., 1990).
fill the crop root zone along the furrow resulting in excessive deep One of the best ways to analyse irrigation water use over large-
percolation at the head of the field. Zwart and Bastiaanssen (2004) scales is through satellite-based remote sensing. The two main ap-
based on a review literature, concluded that globally the range of crop proaches are energy balance models and water balance models using
water productivity values is very large for maize, (1.1–2.7 kg m−3) and reflectance based basal crop coefficients (Kcb) (Neale et al., 1989) de-
thus offers tremendous opportunities for maintaining or increasing rived from canopy reflectance vegetation indices (VI) such as the soil-
agricultural production with 20–40 % less application of water re- adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) (Huete et al., 1984). This crop coef-
sources. The most significant conclusion is that crop water productivity ficient derived from remote sensing can be used in water balance
can be increased significantly if irrigation application is reduced and/or models (RSWB) for estimation of water requirements and biomass as
crop water deficit is induced (deficit irrigation). demonstrated in Campos et al. (2017) combined with the water balance
Some of the above-mentioned studies, demonstrated the con- method described in FAO-56 manual (Allen et al., 1998).
venience of using remote sensing methodologies in the assessment of The use of remote sensing (RS) methodologies to assess crop water
key variables in water accounting and crop evapotranspiration, both demand has been used in many studies (Neale et al., 1989; Campos
potential and in water limited situations. In this research we estimate et al., 2016; Duchemin et al., 2006; Er-Raki et al., 2007; Hunsaker et al.,
corn irrigation water requirements through a remote sensing approach 2005; Jayanthi et al., 2007; Neale et al., 2012) describing the capability
and use field-level crop yield and applied metered water pumping data of vegetation indices to measure crop temporal evolution and relating
to compare and analyze water application and crop water productivity to crop coefficients. In the RSWB methodology, the product between
in thousands of fields in three Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) in Kcb and ETr (reference evapotranspiration) accumulated over time re-
Nebraska namely Tri-Basin, Central Platte, and Lower Niobrara from presents the potential water requirement of the crop over the crop
2004 to 2012. These estimates allowed us to identify fields where sig- growing season. These requirements should be satisfied by the water
nificant over and under irrigation has occurred, examine potential stored in the root zone, the eventual precipitation and applied irrigation
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I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
water. Thus, irrigation requirements (crop water demand) are esti- function of inflows from effective rainfall and irrigation, and outflows
mated in a simple and precise approach and adapted to the actual from deep percolation and actual evapotranspiration based on the
spatially distributed field crop development through the reflectance- widely used and documented FAO-56 methodology (Allen et al., 1998).
based crop coefficients. This approach has been widely evaluated and This research considered an irrigation efficiency of 0.85 and 0.65 for
applied to herbaceous and woody crops by combining airborne or sa- center pivot and furrow system respectively based on an extension
tellite mutltispectral imagery with biophysical and ground-based survey in Nebraska (Irmak et al., 2011).
weather data for a precise description of the Kcb curve for many agri- The methodology used was essentially the one-layer soil water
cultural areas in the world using freely available datasets. Water runoff balance proposed in the FAO-56 manual, with additions to simulate the
after watering events, deep percolation, the capillary rise to/from water soil to surface evaporation and assimilate the temporal evolution of Kcb
tables, the evaporation of water from the bare soil, and the water in- derived from VIs. In addition, other parameters related to plant growth,
tercepted by the plant canopy are other fundamental components of the such as ground cover and rooting depth, are rescaled between their
root zone water balance. maximum and the minimum values proposed in the FAO-56 manual
Irrigation water requirements were generated using the basal crop (Allen et al., 1998) and considering the Kcb values derived from remote
coefficient estimated with the SAVI obtained from Landsat 5 TM and 7 sensing. Irrigation events were triggered on any day when cumulative
ETM + multispectral imagery between April 1 and October 31 for the soil water depletion is greater than the readily available soil water
period from 2004 to 2012 over the three NRD study sites. The images (RAW) of the root zone, which is calculated as the product of the total
were obtained from the atmospherically corrected reflectance provided available soil water in the root zone (TAW) and the fraction of TAW
by the Surface Reflectance Climate Data Record (CDR) of the USGS that can be depleted (p) from the root zone before the crop experience
platform (glovis.usgs.gov/app?fullscreen=1). The SAVI values were water stress (Management Allowed Depletion – MAD). The value of “p”
calculated on a pixel by pixel basis and averaged at the field scale using was set equal to 0.55 consistent with the onset of water stress condi-
an irrigated field’s shapefile vector layer that included a buffer of more tions for corn (Campos et al., 2017; Allen et al., 1998), assuming im-
than 20 m from the edge. The time-discrete SAVI values derived from plicitly that irrigation events to maintain maximum crop evapo-
the remote sensing data were interpolated to daily time series as a transpiration and avoid crop stresses occurred.
function of accumulated growing degree days (GDDs) as proposed by For each field and season, irrespective of soil available water, irri-
(Campos et al., 2017) and converted to estimate the daily Kcb, for each gation will not occur until Kcb exceeds a value of 0.2, indicative of the
pivot and season accord to linear relationship given in Eq. (1) for start of crop development after emergence, and will cease once Kcb
modern high-yielding corn hybrids grown in Nebraska (Campos et al., declines below 0.4 as at this point the crop has reached physiological
2017). maturity. Consequently, model simulations account for variability in
the duration of the irrigation season between fields/years (e.g. due to
Kcb = 1.414 x SAVI - 0.02 (1)
planting date, variety, etc.), with an average start date of mid-May and
GDDs were calculated using a base temperature (Tbase) equal to end date of mid-September consistent with typical practices in
10◦C. For maize, the Kcb data reached its maximum value (0.93) at a Nebraska.
SAVI of 0.68, the minimum value of SAVI 0.12 (bare soil). Soil properties such as soil water content at saturation, field capa-
The analyses performed in this research are based on the ASCE tall city and permanent wilting point used to define the available water
crop reference evapotranspiration; therefore, the minimum Kcb for bare holding capacity (AWHC) for each field are obtained from SSURGO 2.2
soil was set to 0.12. Subsequently, Kcb time series were used as inputs to database (Soil Survey Staff, NRCS–USDA, 2017) shown in Table 1
a soil water balance model to simulate daily actual crop evapo- considering a maximum crop rooting depth of 1.5 m typical of varieties
transpiration and irrigation water use for each field and year. The soil grown in Nebraska.
water balance model tracks daily changes in soil water storage as a Among the three NRD’s there is large soil heterogeneity with respect
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I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
Table 1
Available water holding capacity (mm) considering a maximum crop rooting depth of 1.5 m for the three Natural Resources District in Nebraska.
Central Platte Lower Niobrara Tri-Basin
218.9 44.8 146.3 ± 46.5 191.9 51.4 89.7 ± 31.6 217.2 172.9 204.6 ± 8.3
to AWHC across sampled fields in our study ranging from 89.7 mm for water productivity of irrigation (WPi) and crop water productivity
Lower Niobrara to 204.6 mm for Tri-Basin on average. Tri-Basin also based on evapotranspiration were calculated following Eqs. (2), (3) and
has the lowest standard deviation for AWHC (8.3 mm) with Central (4).
Platte presenting highest heterogeneity (46.5 mm) and the greatest
Yield
range of AWHC from a maximum of 218.9 to a minimum of 44.8 mm. WP =
i + p + ws (2)
These values have a huge impact on the variability of the irrigation
management and must be considered. Yir − Yrf
The soil moisture data at planting were obtained from the High WPi =
i (3)
Plains Regional Climate Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
(hprcc.unl.edu/) and daily SAVI values before crop emergence period Yield
WPET =
were set equal to 0.12 (bare soil) (Campos et al., 2017). Finally, daily ET (4)
weather data (minimum and maximum temperature, rainfall, and re-
WP = crop water productivity
ference evapotranspiration) for the study period were obtained from
WPi = crop water productivity of irrigation
two hundred stations of the High Plains Regional Climate Center
WPET = crop water productivity based on evapotranspiration
(HPRCC, 2018, hprcc.unl.edu/awdn.php) through automated weather
Yir = crop yield under irrigated field
data network and interpolated using inverse distance weighing to
Yrf = crop yield under rainfed condition
achieve the required spatial coverage for each field.
i = Irrigation
We focus the comparison of actual and modeled irrigation water
p = Precipitation
requirements and water productivity on fields growing corn, the main
ws = Soil water storage at planting
irrigated crop type in our study region. The analysis was based on nine
ET = Evapotranspiration
years data (2004–2012) and on irrigation depth applications obtained
The calculations of WP, WPi and WPET were done using observed
from pumping records and corn yield data from 2175 fields collected by
field irrigation data, yield data and modeled evapotranspiration. It is
the three NRDs. The data underwent quality control to ensure data
important to measure WP, WPI and WPET to understand not only the
accuracy (URNRD, 2015). The irrigated field’s polygon was verified
impact of the irrigation and precipitation on the yield, but the re-
using the cropland data layer by the National Agricultural Statistics
lationship among them and the capacity of the plants to convert total
Service of USDA (USDA, 2018). Average corn yield per irrigation
water applied into biomass and ET.
system and rainfed conditions in the three NRDs is presented in Table 2.
The results were submitted to analysis of variance by F test
Fields were discarded from the analysis if supervised classification
(ANOVA) at 1 % probability to assess potential differences between
at the time of peak crop development identified that more than 5 % of
irrigations systems at field and modeled data based on RS.
pixels within the field area were classified as non-vegetated, given in-
dicative SAVI values for bare soil (0.12) and corn at full cover (0.68)
used to train classification algorithms in Erdas Imagine software. 3. Results and discussion
Additionally, we also remove fields from our analysis where, in any
given year, there were an insufficient number or frequency of cloud-free Fig. 2, shows that 2012 was the driest year for all NRDs with pre-
Landsat images to accurately interpolate daily SAVI curves, considering cipitation reaching maximum of 385.9 mm for Lower Niobrara and ETr
a minimum r2 value for interpolated curves of 0.9 given the formulation nearly 2000 mm for Tri-Basin. Considering all NRD’s and years. The
of the relationship between SAVI and accumulated growing degree days average precipitation was 654.7 ± 155.6 mm, with Central Platte
proposed by Campos et al. (2017). having the lowest precipitation of 605.6 ± 150.2 mm and Lower Nio-
Irrigation requirements based on remote sensing was performed brara the highest with 727.7 ± 158.3 mm.
considering two different irrigation systems involving almost 1500 ir- According to FAO-56 (Allen et al., 1998), maize water demand
rigated fields per year (center pivot and furrow irrigation systems) from ranges from 500 to 800 mm for the entire season (from May to Sep-
2004 to 2009, except Lower Niobrara consisting of center pivot irri- tember in Nebraska) depending on the weather, soil type and variety
gation system only. grown. Typically, the precipitation distribution throughout the season
and amounts are not enough to meet maize water requirements, so ir-
rigation is required to guarantee high yields, especially in seasons when
2.3. Crop water productivity droughts occur such as 2012 when a severe flash drought occurred.
Applied irrigation depths for both surface irrigation and center pivot
Crop water productivity (WP) based on total available water, crop systems were compared to modeled irrigation water requirements
Table 2
Grain yield (t ha-1) for the three Natural Resources District considering all the period from 2004 to 2012.
Yield Central Platte Lower Niobrara Tri-Basin
Center Pivot 17.2 4.6 12.0 ± 1.9 15.9 6.7 12.5 ± 1.4 18.1 4.1 13.3 ± 1.6
Furrow 18.2 4.1 12.0 ± 1.8 – – – 17.6 5.6 13.3 ± 1.4
Rainfed 9.06 2.46 6.81 11.91 1.16 6.31 8.59 3.03 6.18
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I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
Fig. 2. Precipitation and reference evapotranspiration (ETr) annual for all seasons and NRD's.
Fig. 3. Irrigation requirement for Central Platte (CP), Lower Niobrara (LN) and Tri Basin (TB) considering all the period of 2004–2012 together according to wet
(blue), average (green) and dry (red) weather conditions. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version
of this article.)
based on the remote sensing methodology for all NRDs over nine years We also observed similar deviation of observed irrigation applica-
and are shown in Fig. 3. tion depths to the modeled irrigation requirement when considering
Considerable variability can be observed in water depth applica- seasonal climatic conditions (wet, dry or average precipitation) sepa-
tions for both furrow surface irrigation and center pivot systems, rately, with a tendency to apply more water in surface irrigation sys-
through the variability in the latter was better distributed around the tems and better management with sprinkler systems. Improved irriga-
1:1 line. Not surprisingly, surface irrigation systems require a larger tion scheduling, soil moisture monitoring and good weather prediction
application depth to advance the water and fill the root zone at the tail would help to minimize the over application of irrigation water, re-
end of the field and is inherent to the design of these systems. This ducing pumping and saving energy.
explains the large seasonal application depths observed, but also shows There was also significant difference (p = 0.01) between irrigation
the potential for reducing pumping from the aquifer and saving energy systems used. Furrow system showed more scatter in the data and larger
if surface irrigation fields were converted to center pivot irrigation. application depth differences between applied and modeled results,
Some high application depths can also be observed for center pivot being on average 88 mm and 115 mm in Central Platte and Tri-Basin
systems in all three NRD’s indicating variability in farmer behavior, (Fig. 4), both sites 200 % more than pivot. This is not surprising as
possibly resulting from in-field variability of soils and physical char- surface irrigation systems inherently require larger application depths
acteristics and limitations of the irrigation system. Nevertheless, there to fill the root zone at the tail end of the field. With center pivot sys-
is a potential to decrease application depths to better match the de- tems, it is easier to control the amount of water applied than with
mands, but this would have to be evaluated on a field-by-field basis. furrow system because most surface irrigation projects are built and
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I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
Fig. 4. Mean irrigation requirement difference for Central Platte (A), Lower Niobrara (B) and Tri Basin (C) considering the period of 2004–2012.
operated without the use of proper techniques such as laser land le- allocation). Water use allocations in Tri-Basin are not differentiated by
veling, resulting in low uniformity and water application efficiency soil type, therefore, growers whose fields have coarser soils will have
(between 30 and 60 %) due to deep percolation and/or runoff. Thus greater incentive to adopt more efficient irrigation management prac-
growers need to apply more water than crop water demand to guar- tices, especially during drought years, due to the higher gross water
antee higher yields. What is encouraging is that the number of furrow demands on these fields.
irrigated hectares in Nebraska has decreased from almost 1 million to Foster et al. (2019) found similar results in Upper Republic District
approximately 0.60 million hectares in the past ten years. in Nebraska with large variability in individual irrigation behavior,
Regardless of the precipitation amounts, furrow irrigation systems even after accounting for biophysical drivers of water use such as
apply more water than the irrigation requirements in all NRD’s (Fig. 5). weather, soil type, crop choice, and irrigation technology. Over-irri-
During the drought year (2012, highlighted in red), both irrigation gation in wet years and under-irrigation in drier years was observed.
systems applied less water than plant irrigation requirement. Gibson et al. (2018) investigating sources of variation for irrigation
In wetter years, water availability is plentiful for most farmers and, across producer fields in Nebraska for nine years found high variability
as a result, there are few incentives for producers to adopt efficient on applied irrigation depth due to soil and weather variability, and also
irrigation management practices to conserve water. However, in that producer behavior likely played a significant role in irrigation
drought years, higher costs of groundwater pumping and irrigation decisions. Bretreger et al. (2019) also found high variability between
system physical limitations likely force farmers to reduce water use applied and modeled irrigation in Australia using climate data and
even in the absence of any binding regulatory limits to water supply as Landsat observations for thousand fields in a short period of analyze
is the case of Central Platte and Lower Niobrara (non-use water demonstrating the ability of certain remote sensing technique for
Fig. 5. Observed and modeled average irrigation for Central Platte (A), Lower Niobrara (B) and Tri-Basin (C) considering center pivot and furrow irrigation for the
entire period.
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I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
Fig. 6. Crop water productivity based on evapotranspiration for Central Platte (A), Lower Niobrara (B) and Tri-Basin (C).
irrigation water use and monitoring irrigation. Regarding to WPET, between irrigation systems within the same
Our results demonstrate that there are significant opportunities to NRDs the values were very similar. However, analyzing the WP over all
reduce agricultural water pumping on fields for both types of irrigation the years, we can see that center pivot system always had greater WP
systems to support regional level conservation of groundwater re- and WPi for all the years, and highest values in 2012 due to driest year.
sources as a buffer against future drought (Foster et al., 2017; Tri-Basin again showed the greatest values for WP and WPi over the
Cotterman et al., 2017) and to minimize negative impacts of drawdown seasons reaching the maximum of 3.26 kg m-3 for center pivot in 2012
on freshwater ecosystems (Perkin et al., 2017). (Table 4).
Sometimes even the irrigation system as the case of center pivot is One of the ways to improve water management in Nebraska ac-
not able to supply the high evapotranspiration demand during the en- cording to the results obtained, would be to invest in improved irri-
tire season when the precipitation is deficient becoming an additional gation management by switching from furrow irrigation to center pivot
challenge facing the growers to manage the water resources through irrigation system or improved irrigation scheduling. The main barrier is
scarcity conditions. The impact of water management on WPs is shown the high cost of implementation. However, simulation analysis showed
in the Fig. 6 and 7 for both irrigation systems in all NRD’s. There was no that up to 32 % of the annual water volume allocated to irrigated maize
difference in WPET between irrigations systems for all NRD’s, WPET of in the region could be saved by switching current surface systems to
furrow was slightly larger than the pivot for Tri-Basin because of the pivot (Grassini et al., 2011) and, along the years of this study, the
slightly larger simulated ET for center pivot (768 mm) compared to number of the furrow system has decreased year by year.
furrow (754 mm), see Table 3. Similar results for WP were observed by Carr et al. (2016) in Ne-
Center pivot showed greater WP and WPi than furrow system in all braska with values from 1.30 to 1.91 kg m-3 in irrigated areas con-
NRDs due the smaller amount of water applied through the irrigation sidering nine years of analyses and, revealed that in most cases, the
system. Tri-Basin had the greatest WP value for both irrigation systems same level of corn yields could be achieved using less irrigation ac-
due to less total amount of applied water (247 and 356 mm for pivot cording to the comparison between the simulation results and the ob-
and furrow respectively at field) and highest grain yield (13.3 t ha-1), servations. Similar conclusions were made in a two-year, large scale
these values can be related to the soil type, being very deep and study conducted in farmer’s fields across Nebraska by Irmak et al.
showing the highest values of available water holding capacity (2012). In that study, farmers used 32%–34% more irrigation than the
(204.6 mm), which allows for maintaining a higher water content in the necessary amount.
root zone after irrigation or rain and minimizing water stress, hence The average applied irrigation rate and water productivities pre-
increasing crops yields. Similar results were found in Ethiopia in large sented above can be considered an initial benchmark levels that pro-
scale analysis of water applied, where the difference between water ducers could use as a target to aim at and improve their irrigation ap-
pumped and required was mainly due to differences in characteristics of plication rate and water productivity. A full understanding of the
soil water holding capacity of each region (Asres, 2016). Lower Nio- spatial patterns of water productivity and setting benchmark level will
brara had the lowest WP values due to greatest amount of applied water support the effort to make irrigation water use more productive and
(416 mm) a result of the sandier soils requiring more frequent irrigation sustainable.
events. Regarding to WPi, the rainfed yield to all the sites were very
similar, however, smaller yields compared to irrigated, for Tri-Basin the
irrigated yield is 7.1 t ha-1 over rainfed and, considering all the NRDs 4. Conclusion
6.2 t ha-1 on average showing how the irrigation is important to main-
tain high yields and food security. As Tri-basin presented the greater Irrigation amounts used in the three NRDs exceeded the crop water
difference between irrigated and rainfed yields and, also, lower irri- requirement amounts to achieve optimal corn yield rates. In general,
gation amount applied, consequently had the greatest WPi values for center pivots showed better results for all study sites and seasons. In
both irrigation systems (3.06 for center pivot and 2.28 kg m-3 for furrow 2012 (drought year) center pivots showed under-irrigation for all NRDs
system respectively). and furrow systems had similar results due mainly to capacity of water
pumping to supply the crop water demand. Furrow system presented
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I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
Fig. 7. Crop water productivity of total available water and irrigation for Central Platte (A), Lower Niobrara (B) and Tri-Basin (C).
Table 3 system water use efficiency reaching the maximum value of 1.37 and
Grain yield (t ha-1) for the three Natural Resources District considering all the 3.06 kg m3 for WP and WPi respectively in Tri-Basin.
period from 2004 to 2012. According to the analyses, it is not clear whether irrigator’s behavior
Site Observed Observed Seasonal Seasonal is influenced by the weather conditions or soil type variability.
yield (t ha) irrigation ET (mm) precipitation However, the large variability indicates potential for reducing pumping
(mm) (mm) and saving energy if surface irrigation fields were converted to center
pivot irrigation. Also, irrigation scheduling can be improved, mon-
Cenral Platte 12.0 387 737 451
Gravity 12.0 416 736 450 itoring soil moisture and including weather predictions would help to
Pivot 12.0 304 738 452 minimize the over application of irrigation water, reducing pumping
Lower Niobrara 12.5 416 753 460 and saving energy.
Pivot 12.5 416 753 460
This research applied over a large area, a new reflectance-based
Tri-Basin 13.3 278 764 439
Gravity 13.4 356 754 438
crop coefficient relationship to estimate water requirements for modern
Pivot 13.3 247 768 439 high-yielding corn hybrids grown in Nebraska following Campos et al.
Mean 12.4 364 745 449 (2017). As this research was carried out in one of the most intensely
irrigated areas of the world, our findings might be a reference to irri-
gated corn worldwide when center pivot and furrow irrigation systems
more variability than center pivots for the entire study period con- are used.
sidering all NRD’s. The current study showed for remote sensing techniques can used to
Central Platte had the highest average applications depth difference estimate optimum irrigation requirement in large scales (over one
between applied and modeled considering the entire period, with thousand fields and longer period). The analysis also allowed to identify
88 mm by furrow irrigation followed by Tri-Basin with 115 mm. Center for both furrow and pivot systems to what extent the field level irri-
pivot had lower average applied water depth differences with 37 mm in gation application differs to the net irrigation water requirement. By
Central Platte and 48 mm for Tri-Basin. Due to higher irrigation depth doing such analysis, the current work contributes to on how to improve
difference and larger variability in the results, Central Nebraska has a the irrigation management with low cost and accurate estimate of net
larger potential to improve water management, especially with con- irrigation requirements.
version of furrow systems to center pivot.
WPET was not different between irrigations systems, however WP
and WPi for center pivot was greater than furrow system due to better
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I.Z. Gonçalves, et al. Agricultural Water Management 228 (2020) 105924
Table 4
Temporal WPs (kg m-3) considering all the sites, seasons and irrigation methods.
Seasons
Site 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Declaration of interests irrigation in central Morocco on the use of relationships between evapotranspiration,
crop coefficients, leaf area index and remotely-sensed vegetation indices. Agric.
Water Manag. 79, 1–27.
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial Er-Raki, S., Chehbouni, A., Guemouria, N., Duchemin, B., Ezzahar, J., Hadria, R., 2007.
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ- Combining FAO-56 model and ground-based remote sensing to estimate water con-
ence the work reported in this paper. sumptions of wheat crops in a semi-arid region. Agric. Water Manag. 87, 41–54.
Foster, T., Goncalves, I.Z., Campos, I., Neale, C.M.U., Brozovic, N., 2019. Assessing
landscape scale heterogeneity in irrigation water use with remote sensing and in situ
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