Irrigation Water Management

Irrigated lands of Franklin County contain many coarse textured soils with little organic matter. These soils have low water holding capacities that allow rapid movement of excess water down through the soil profile contributing to the leaching of contaminants into groundwater.

The Franklin Conservation District can provide you with information to achieve a higher level of (IWM) Irrigation Water Management. Practicing IWM can help minimize water quality problems, reduce energy costs and improve crop quality and yield.

Irrigators need to consider a few important points to achieve their IWM goal:

• Irrigation system performance and maintenance
• Uniformity of Irrigation Applications
• How much water to apply, and when
• Soil Moisture Monitoring

Irrigation system evaluations can provide valuable information to an irrigator. To perform an irrigation system evaluation, cups are placed in a line underneath the center pivot to catch the applied water. The water in the cups is then measured and run through a computer program to calculate distribution uniformity.

Rapidly advancing technology is helping to improve Irrigation Water Management. In the image to the right we see a telemetry system that can transmit various types of data, at varying intervals from the field to your computer at home, or your laptop in your truck.

Some of the cheaper, easier ways of monitoring soil moisture can be done by the use of Watermarks which measure electrical resistance or tensiometers which measure the "pull" of moisture in the soil.