92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Monday, 23 January 2012
Crop Irrigation Monitoring and Management Support in California with the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System
Hall E (New Orleans Convention Center )
Forrest Melton, ARC, Moffett Field, CA; and L. Johnson, C. Lund, A. Michaelis, A. Guzman, L. Pierce, S. Hiatt, A. Purdy, R. Nemani, and E. Sheffner

Satellite data can potentially be used to map crop coefficients over large areas and make irrigation scheduling more practical, convenient, and accurate, but requires the development of new tools and cyber-infrastructure to support operational use in irrigation management. We present findings from the development and deployment of a prototype system for irrigation management support that utilizes the NASA Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) to integrate satellite observations and meteorological observations to map basal crop coefficient (Kcb) and evapotranspiration (ETcb) values for multiple crop types in the Central Valley of California at spatial resolutions that are useful for irrigation management at the farm level. Integration of data from the NOAA NWS Forecasted Reference Evapotranspiration (FRET) system also allows forecasting of irrigation demand with lead times of up to 1 week. Information from the system is distributed to water managers and agricultural producers via both hand-held devices as well as via a browser-based irrigation management decision support system.

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