FAS Abstracts 2004 Meeting Page

Agricultural Sciences (AGR): POS-1

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Development of a method to measure total capacity of an irrigation system.  C. CORNEJO.  Dept. Ag. and Bio. Eng., U. Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.  The objective of this study was to determine the total area that can be irrigated under several scenarios of land use.  The extent of the land that can be brought under irrigated production was estimated based on a simple water budget model that required estimation of crop water requirements, irrigation efficiency, and evaporation from the dams and canals based on the available weather data.  CROPWAT, a software package developed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was used for calculations of crop water requirements (CWR) and irrigation requirements.  The reference evapotranspiration (ET_o) was calculated using historical average weather data for the Santa Elena Peninsula and the results were used to create average monthly surface maps of ET_o using ArcMap® (ESRI®).  Nine scenarios were created to calculate the water available for agricultural production and the area that can be irrigated with available water.