California water situation makes us think about our Water Consumption

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Are we learning any thing from the trending water crises going on? Or we just want to fix the problem for that point of that only.

Do you calculate and check your water consumption?

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  1. Good question Tamara. I can only offer that part of good irrigation system design is precision, block-level water measurement, so that the water budgets developed as part of the current crop plan can be analyzed, and be part of a continuous improvement program, as directed by all the powers and authorities you report to.
    I come to this late, as well as early, in my career. It was about 1980, at the Cooperative Extension conference room, when researchers from the University of Arizona explained their development of new expert system for irrigated crop production. The elaborate model was akin to Gossym Comax. http://unfccc.int/adaptation/nairobi_work_programme/knowledge_resources_and_publications/items/5461.php. At the end of the presentation, after it had been revealed that the model was still in development, and the accumulative, multiple sources or error still needed work. That periodically users would need to ground-truth the model's current status values, I stood up and aked, "If you have to go out and collect soil moisture data to correct for the error just in that parameter, why not just continuously measure soil moisture content?" I think the presenters couldn't quite decide how to answer that question.
    Nothing fundamental has changed; sure fertility, pest management, knowledge of soil biome nurturing practices, seed technology/development has all evolved; sure, irrigation application technologies and materials are better; sure the sensors and data acquisition are better and more cost effective.....short of neutron probe monitoring. Now you can purchase (3) really reliable sensors, with a cool battery-op (SDI12) cigarette-pack-sized data logger (to up to 10 hard-wired sensors within 200 feet), and the software for less than $900 USD! Still, commercial adoption is nil. Too much noise in the market !
    It was probably Dr. Phene (UC Davis) that first added on-cite ground-truthing to his on-cite evaporation pans, making in-situ crop coefficient development and refinement possible. But in 2004, I commented to the public on the Irrigation Association Smart Water Application Technology Protocol for independent weather-based, smart controller testing/vetting that, to me, clearly the smart ET controllers were rife with error, that historical, high-grade ET weather data for 5-year ETr normals was maybe better, and independent, not inter-connected soil moisture monitoring, to perfect the inputted Kc, was the obvious, best method.
    But adoption remains low, and we still have too many marketing-schemes from Wall Street unabashedly claiming they can reduce water use by 70%. Poppy-cock !

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  2. Ya you can estimate crop may be by GIS and remote sensing , crop water requirements, animal water requirements, human and industrial water requirements, for all estimation collect data from past to present as possible years, collect scientific information about daily consumption per unit. Area may be river basin or administrative area like district or state etc. calculate and determine the crisis will be or not along with rainfall availability water. ( in one project I have made water balance of part of India in this water was found excess then requirement, it helps you in your region water balance. water is excess or scare according new policy may form)

  3. I feel that in theory people are learning to conserve their water. But practicing it might be a bit more difficult. If water conservation was never in someone's daily routine it might prove to be more of a challenge to execute it. On a more positive note, I feel that companies are coming up with new technology to increase water availability while fighting overall water loss.