Combined simulation and optimization framework for irrigation scheduling in agriculture felds

Thumbnail
View/Open
Issue date
2021
Author
Fontanet, Mireia
Fernàndez‑Garcia, Daniel
Rodrigo, Gema
Ferrer, Francesc
Villar Mir, Josep Ma.
Suggested citation
Fontanet, Mireia; Fernàndez‑Garcia, Daniel; Rodrigo, Gema; Ferrer, Francesc; Villar Mir, Josep Ma.; . (2021) . Combined simulation and optimization framework for irrigation scheduling in agriculture felds. Irrigation Science, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00271-021-00746-y.
Impact

Google Scholar logo  Google Scholar
Share
Export to Mendeley
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
In the context of growing evidence of climate change and the fact that agriculture uses about 70% of all the water available for irrigation in semi-arid areas, there is an increasing probability of water scarcity scenarios. Water irrigation optimization is, therefore, one of the main goals of researchers and stakeholders involved in irrigated agriculture. Irrigation scheduling is often conducted based on simple water requirement calculations without accounting for the strong link between water movement in the root zone, soil–water–crop productivity and irrigation expenses. In this work, we present a combined simulation and optimization framework aimed at estimating irrigation parameters that maximize the crop net margin. The simulation component couples the movement of water in a variably saturated porous media driven by irrigation with crop water uptake and crop yields. The optimization component assures maximum gain with minimum cost of crop production during a growing season. An application of the method demonstrates that an optimal solution exists and substantially difers from traditional methods. In contrast to traditional methods, results show that the optimal irrigation scheduling solution prevents water logging and provides a more constant value of water content during the entire growing season within the root zone. As a result, in this case, the crop net margin cost exhibits a substantial increase with respect to the traditional method. The optimal irrigation scheduling solution is also shown to strongly depend on the particular soil hydraulic properties of the given feld site.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/71849
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00271-021-00746-y
Is part of
Irrigation Science, 2021
Collections

The following license files are associated with this item:

cc-by (c) Fontanet et al., 2021
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as cc-by (c) Fontanet et al., 2021