Georgia Water Resources Conference

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Georgia Water Resources Conference

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Georgia Water Resources Institute

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Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

Agriculture Water Permitting: Turning Regional Plans into Permitting Decisions

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-03) Hook, James E. ; Harrison, Kerry A. ; Lewis, Cliff ; Betts, Danna ; Alfonso, Amber

During 2006, the Flint River Basin Water Conservation and Development Plan (FRBP) and the Coastal Georgia Water and Wastewater Permitting Plan for Managing Saltwater Intrusion (CZP) were adopted by Georgia Environmental Protection Division. Both had big impacts on permitting of agricultural water withdrawals. Moratoria had been in place postponing new permits. With acceptance of the plans, a flood of backlogged applications, some as old as six years, had to be processed. Permit rule changes in the plans or brought about by concomitant new legislation had to be implemented. The newly formed Agriculture Permitting Unit was relocated to Tifton, and UGA personnel assisted in transforming EPD permitting processes to speed up processing to handle the backlog and implement new regional plans. Existing permits and new applications were incorporated into a geodatabase since most permitting decisions are location specific. GIS tools and models were developed to systematically and objectively evaluate applications, and procedures were established to improve the communication between EPD and agricultural applicants.
Impact of local weather variability on irrigation water use in Georgia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-04) Guerra, Larry C. ; Garcia y Garcia, Axel ; Hoogenboom, Gerrit ; Hook, James E. ; Harrison, Kerry A. ; Boken, Vijendra K.

Irrigation is often used to offset the impact of rainfall variability on crop yield and to reduce the risk associated with weather variability. However, especially for the state of Georgia, how much water is required and how much water is actually being used for irrigation is largely unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between farmers' irrigation applications, crop types, and local weather conditions. Farmers' monthly irrigation applications for three major crops in Georgia, i.e., cotton, peanut and maize, were obtained from selected sites of the Agricultural Water Pumping program. Significant relationships between monthly irrigation depth and monthly water deficit were obtained for only two of seven months for cotton, five of seven months for peanut, and only one of six months for maize. Individual differences among farmers on how much water they applied contributed to the lack of correlation between monthly irrigation depth and monthly water deficit. Future efforts should focus on a better understanding of the factors that contribute to the farmer's decisions related to when to irrigate and how much water to apply.
The potential of a decision support system to simulate irrigation scheduling in southwest Georgia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-04) Garcia y Garcia, Axel ; Guerra, Larry C. ; Hoogenboom, Gerrit ; Hook, James E. ; Harrison, Kerry A.

A decision support system was used to simulate irrigation scheduling for maize, cotton, and peanut for the 2001 to 2004 cropping seasons in southwest Georgia. The results were compared with observed data from the Agricultural Water Pumping (AWP) project. The comparison of the cumulative distribution functions between simulated and observed monthly amounts of irrigation showed significant differences for the three crops. However, almost 50% of the simulated cotton and peanut monthly amounts of irrigation were adequately correlated with the observed data. The analysis and comparison of the observed and simulated irrigation scheduling showed the potential that the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) crop simulation models can be used as a tool for on-farm irrigation scheduling.
Water Use Estimation for Some Major Crops in Georgia Using Geospatial Modeling

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-04) Boken, Vijendra K. ; Hoogenboom, Gerrit ; Guerra, Larry C. ; Hook, James E. ; Thomas, Daniel L. ; Harrison, Kerry A.

Agricultural water use estimation can contribute to finding a satisfactory solution of the water dispute among the states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In this paper, the depths of irrigation for cotton, peanut, corn, and soybean are estimated for the Flint, Central, and Coastal water zones of Georgia for 2000, 2001, and 2002. In addition, the volume of irrigation for these crops are estimated for 2000 and 2001. The estimation was based on the spatial interpolation of the data collected under the Agricultural Water Pumping project. The interpolation techniques included the inverse distance weighting, local polynomial, global polynomial, radial basis function, ordinary kriging, and universal kriging. The total volume of irrigation was highest for the Flint zone (578.4 Mm3 ), followed by the Central zone (296.3 Mm3 ) and the Coastal zone (103.0 Mm3 ) for 2000. For 2001, the irrigation volume declined by 41% for the Flint zone, 31% for the Central zone, and 20% for the Coastal zone.
Agricultural Water Use in Georgia: Results from the Ag. Water Pumping Program

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-04) Thomas, Daniel L. ; Harrison, Kerry A. ; Hook, James E. ; Hoogenboom, Gerrit ; McClendon, R. W. ; Wheeler, L.

This paper presents the results for the period 1999 to 2002 from the monitoring program that is estimating agricultural water use across the entire state of Georgia. This program is called AG. WATER PUMPING (Agricultural Water: Potential Use and Management Program in Georgia). Current conflicts on water allocation in the ACT (Alabama, Coosa, and Tallapoosa) and ACF (Apalachicola, Flint, and Chattahoochee) river basins, saltwater intrusion effects in the 24 county area of southeast Georgia, water level declines in the central region, and other potential impacts on water use are all limited by the lack of available information on agricultural water use. This 5-year project is nearing completion. The results for calendar years 2001 and 2002 are based on the complete monitoring site installation whereas previous years were during the installation (incomplete coverage in selected parts of the state).
Estimating Statewide Irrigation Requirements Using a Crop Simulation Model

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-04) Guerra, Larry C. ; Hoogenboom, Gerrit ; Boken, Vijendra K. ; Thomas, Daniel L. ; Hook, James E. ; Harrison, Kerry A.

An understanding of water needs in agriculture is a critical input in resolving the water resource issues that confront the state of Georgia. Unfortunately, how much water is required and how much water is actually being used for irrigation is unknown. The objective of this study was to estimate water demand for irrigation for the entire state of Georgia using a crop simulation model. The irrigation requirements for all the counties where irrigated cotton, corn, peanut and soybean were grown in 2000, 2001 and 2002 were estimated using the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model. These counties were distributed across seven regions; with three regions, i.e., Flint Basin, Central Coastal Plain and Coastal Zone, representing the major growing areas. The combined irrigation withdrawal in the Flint Basin, Central Coastal Plain and Coastal Zone accounted for about 98% and 99% of the statewide total irrigation withdrawal in 2000 and 2001, respectively, mainly due to large irrigated acreage in those regions. Statewide total irrigation withdrawal was estimated to be 199,125 Mgallons in 2000 and 114,101 Mgallons in 2001. These irrigation requirements will vary from year to year depending on the spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall during the growing season. Total irrigated acreage also had a major impact on irrigation withdrawal. We will implement the model for other crops to determine the total irrigation withdrawals for agriculture in the state of Georgia.
Recommendations for Metering Agricultural Water Withdrawals in Georgia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-04) Thomas, Daniel L. ; Harrison, Kerry A. ; Norton, Virgil ; Norton, Nancy A. ; Hook, James E. ; Eigenberg, D.A. ; Wheeler, L.

The purpose of this short document is to provide general recommendations for approaches to measuring agricultural irrigation withdrawals from surface and ground water resources for the state of Georgia. With over 20,000 permitted withdrawals already in place, this will not be a trivial task. Many of these recommendations have been incorporated into House Bill 237 which was introduced during the 2003 legislative session in Georgia.
Using a Small Sub-sample to Project State-wide Agricultural Irrigation Water Use in 2000

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-03) Houser, James B. ; Hoogenboom, Gerrit ; Hook, James E. ; Thomas, Daniel L. ; Harrison, Kerry A.

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.
Status of Agricultural Water Pumping: A Program to Determine Agricultural Water Use in Georgia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-03) Thomas, Daniel L. ; Harrison, Kerry A. ; Hook, James E. ; Hoogenboom, Gerrit ; McClendon, R. W. ; Wheeler, L. ; Segars, William I. ; Mallard, J. ; Murphy, G. ; Lindsay, M. ; Coker, D. D. ; Whitley, T. ; Houser, James B. ; Cromer, S. ; Myers-Roche, C.

This paper presents the current status of a combined monitoring and modeling program to estimate agricultural water use across the entire state of Georgia. This program is called AG. WATER PUMPING (Agricultural Water: Potential Use and Management Program in Georgia). Current conflicts on water allocation in the ACT (Alabama, Coosa, and Talapoosa) and ACF (Apalachicola, Flint, and Chattahoochee) river basins, saltwater intrusion effects in the 24 county area of southeast Georgia and other potential impacts on water use are all limited by the lack of available information on agricultural water use. This 5-year project is at the mid-point in it's development and is expected to provide comprehensive data starting in 2001. Preliminary results are presented for the partial monitoring installation in calendar year 2000.