drip irrigation

[Claire Baffaut]

Hello,

I have looked at all the threads that deal with drip irrigation. I understand how to set it up .

My question is whether APEX still applies the irrigation water amount to the whole field or differentiates between the area around the plant or the rows, and the inter-row areas.

How can we simulate the (expected) water saving from drip irrigation compared to other irrigation methods?

Thank you,

[Jaehak]

Hi Claire,

It's an excellent point worth discussing. APEX distributes the drip irrigation water evenly across the field. Thus, you may assume that the model does not account for the benefits of the concentration irrigation method, possibly underestimating the water use efficiency. However, we assume the crop roots can access any available soil water in the soil root zone. If the drip irrigation makes the smc stay above the wilting point, then the model output should reasonably represent the irrigation practice. Expected water saving from drip irrigation may be well captured by apex by higher irrigation efficiency and lower runoff losses compared to other irrigation methods.

Jaehak   

[Luca Doro]

Hi Claire,

I am wondering if the approach used to simulate the presence of grass in an orchard can be used here. We assumed that the grass occupies something like 2/3 of the entire field (grass only between rows of trees). As a consequence, we divided the entire field in two subareas, one (1/3 of original area) with trees and the remaining 2/3 with grass only. So, considering the ratio of wetted/not wetted area, the total field area can be split in two subareas.

Just throwing in my two cents.

Luca