IrriSatSMS Satellite and SMS Irrigation Scheduling Service

John Hornbuckle, Nick Car & Evan Christen

IrriSatSMS - Satellite and SMS Irrigation Scheduling Service

• Aims to overcome the costs and complexities of irrigation scheduling

• Capturing the bulk of the ‘market’ and providing them with a tool for assisting these decisions can deliver real water savings

• The system provides irrigation scheduling information specific for a farm at an extremely low cost, directly to their mobile phone, taking into account the latest weather conditions and their crop needs ensuring decisions on irrigation are made with the best available information

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0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6

Normalised water use (average = 1, StDev 0.15-0.19)

Fre

qu

ency

Water saving aproaches1) Address skewed distribution, users > 1 Stdev shift back to mean- Results in 15% and 13% of water saving - These users are 10% and 13% of total users

2) Shift the users between mean and 1 Stdev back to median- Results in 43% and 41% water saving- These users are 40% and 33% of users

How does IrriSatSMS schedule ?

• Using the FAO 56 approach

ETc = ETo x Kc

Actual water use of crop

Reference water use – weather station

Crop Coefficient – relates your crop to the reference crop

Gaining individual crop coefficients

• Multi-spectral (Spot,Landsat, Iknonos) satellites cover MIA approx. every 7-14 days

• Images of everyone's individual crop

• Can this information can be used for gaining the crop coefficient

Crop Coefficient : Canopy Cover

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0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%Canopy Cover (%)

Cro

p C

oeff

icie

nt, K

c

Lettuce

Pepper

2006

y = 0.7661x + 0.1028R2 = 0.9344

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0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0IR Canopy Cover

Lan

dsa

t N

DV

IRed LettucePerennialMelonsGarlic2005

USDA – Trout, Ayars

Determining Kc from NDVI - grapevines

Kc = 2.26 x NDVI – 0.4352

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17/07/2005 5/09/2005 25/10/2005 14/12/2005 2/02/2006 24/03/2006 13/05/2006

Date

ET

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m)

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Cro

p C

oef

fici

ent

ETo

ETc Drip

Kc

How does the IrriSatSMS schedule ?

• Using the FAO 56 approach

ETc = ETo x KcActual water use of crop

.. But still in a format that’s not much use!

Making the scheduling information useful

Irrigation

Rainfall

Overview of IrriSatSMS

Determination of a crop coefficient (Kc) from

satellite image

ETo from Weather Station

or SILO

Incorporates management/soil/water/salinity

constraints

On Ground

Satellite images used to determine plant

performance of an irrigators crop Representing

Individual Paddocks

Satellite Measurements

Potential Evaporation based on Atmospheric Demand

ETc = ETo X Kc

Crop water use determined and irrigation requirement

Daily irrigation scheduling information delivered to

irrigators through SMS

Benchmarking and auditing

Try a Demonstration Now!

SMS demo run times to 0416 905 013 and you’ll receive a demonstration SMS reply for grapevines in Griffith, NSW

Future efforts/issues

Understanding and irrigating for spatial variability – making use of RS data

Rastus – spatial soil, water, plant model

Future efforts/issues

• RS for assessing crop/plant stress i.e. LWP from RS – implementing RDI, SDI irrigation strategies for monitoring water stress for improved quality – a simple thermal type approach

• Soil moisture – deeper and with greater resolution

• Linking RS data with irrigation management models

• Large group of irrigators which we have real time water use and soil moisture monitoring (60+) senteks/cprobes

• Heavily instrumented field sites EB, SM, EM, ET, T, etc • Very interested in being a part of any future campaign

Future Campaigns

Contact UsPhone: 1300 363 400 or +61 3 9545 2176

Email: enquiries@csiro.au Web: www.csiro.au

Thank you