Title:
Using a Small Sub-sample to Project State-wide Agricultural Irrigation Water Use in 2000
Using a Small Sub-sample to Project State-wide Agricultural Irrigation Water Use in 2000
Author(s)
Houser, James B.
Hoogenboom, Gerrit
Hook, James E.
Thomas, Daniel L.
Harrison, Kerry A.
Hoogenboom, Gerrit
Hook, James E.
Thomas, Daniel L.
Harrison, Kerry A.
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Hatcher, Kathryn J.
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Abstract
The Agricultural Water: Potential Use and Management Program in Georgia program (Ag. Water
Pumping) began instrumenting and collecting agricultural water use data in 1999. As of October 2000, at least 407
permitted agricultural withdrawals, and more than 600 individual sites are in the monitoring program across the
state of Georgia. This represents, however, just a small subset of the more than 19,000 permitted sites in the state. In order to scale-up this subset to represent an estimate of total statewide agricultural irrigation water,
the already collected data of the Ag Water Pumping project were used to estimate monthly average use
amounts per crop type. Then, based on agricultural
statistics data, the total amount of irrigated acreage for each crop in the state was estimated. These two sets of estimates were combined to project the total amount of
agricultural irrigation water for the whole state. An initial rough estimate, based on permit numbers of
agricultural irrigators who have the capacity to pump or withdraw 4.4 1/sec (100,000 gallons/day) from either surface or ground water, showed that if there are 22,000
such sites in the state then water use would be 330,000 M
gallons/year for the whole state or 1,012,425 Acre-
ft/year. The value arrived at using the actually measured
Ag Water Pumping subset and scaling up was 489,000 M
gallons/year or 1,501,457 Acre-ft/year. It is encouraging
that this initial analysis to scale-up refined data has given a total state water use amount which is not radically
different from the extremely gross estimate based on the number of permits and their allotted flow rates. Further analysis and additional data are needed to provide a legitimate estimate of agricultural water use in the state of Georgia.
Sponsor
Sponsored and Organized by: U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Conservation Service, The University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology
Date Issued
2001-03
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Proceedings