What we do
We are working to improve agriculture and landscape productivity, profitability, function, and performance, to convene important conversations among diverse partners, and to support stewardship of critical water, energy, and soil resources through advanced irrigation management.
The big picture: how our work adds up
Society is in a race to balance water supply and demand, with dwindling irrigation water supplies under additional pressure from extreme climate events and population growth.
Here are four examples of how we are helping irrigators, water managers, the irrigation industry and others to meet this challenge:
— Water supply —
— Water demand —
Water flow rate
A new flow sensor testing protocol was developed to support homeowners and landscape managers in conserving water, protecting plants, and avoiding site damage and water quality issues, irrigation system component failures, and overwatering.
System run time
A dashboard that provides real-time water use data, calculated using electricity use data, is encouraging active water monitoring and management by Nebraska irrigators in two Natural Resources Districts, to achieve field- and watershed level goals.
Irrigation area
Mobile drip irrigation, pictured above, is being tested in the Texas High Plains to assess potential water savings and determine if updating existing center pivot infrastructure with this new technology is cost-effective for producing high-value crops.
Irrigation depth
IIC research is helping eliminate irrigation decision guesswork by improving models and scheduling tools and integrating soil moisture, crop water, crop stand temperature and weather data to automatically trigger center pivot water delivery.
Case Studies
Featured
“Being part of the IIC has allowed us to advance real-time performance evaluation of our irrigation networks and in closing our annual water balance more accurately.
With less uncertainty about where our water is going after we pump it out of the aquifer, we can manage it better; we can also offer fresh expertise to Amarillo’s surrounding communities on the true status and trends in the aquifer on which our rapid, suburban growth is relying.”
— Brent Auvermann, Texas A&M University
Want to collaborate on research?
Project List
2022
Using the irrigation-energy linkage to estimate irrigation water delivery (continued from 2020 and 2021) Metadata
Principal Investigator: Amy Harsch, Nebraska Water Balance
Industry Partner: Grower Information Services Co-op
Developing a data assimilation and integration tool for irrigation management technologies used by California Almond Growers
Principal Investigator: Nicholas Bambach, Ph.D., University of California Davis
Industry Partner: Almond Board of California
Extension outreach tools to improve adoption of irrigation management technologies in the Texas Panhandle Metadata 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Principal Investigator: David Parker, Ph.D., West Texas A&M University & Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Industry Partners: Better Harvest Co., Providence Farms
Organizing and analyzing Testing Ag Performance Solutions program data, quantifying productivity and GHG outcomes for corn, grain sorghum, and cotton
Principal Investigator: Daran Rudnick, Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
2021
Precision mobile drip for specialty crop vegetable production Metadata 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8
Principal Investigator: Qingwu Xue, Ph.D. Texas A&M University
Industry Partners: Dragon Line, Valmont, and Dynamax Inc.
Advancing pivot automation with proximal sensing for maize and soybean in the Great Plains (continued from 2020) Metadata
Principal Investigator: Derek Heeren, Ph.D. University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Industry Partner: Valmont
Irrigation scheduling using soil water supply and atmospheric evaporative demand Metadata 1 , 2 , 3
Principal Investigator: Trenton Franz, Ph.D. University of Nebraska- Lincoln
Industry Partners: Aspiring Universe Corporation, Arable Lab, HydroInnova LLC, Corteva and PlanetLabs Inc.
Connecting field-scale performance to watershed health: the added power of sharing data (continued from 2020) Metadata
Principal Investigator: Dayle McDermitt, Ph.D. Nebraska Water Balance Alliance
Industry Partners: Grower Information Services Cooperative, Olsson
Quantifying irrigation water savings of Agrivoltaics
Principal Investigator: Jordan Macknick, Ph.D. National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Industry Partner: Jack’s Solar Garden
Sustainable plasticulture recycling opportunities Metadata 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
Principal Investigator: Charles Hillyer, Ph.D. California State University-Fresno
Industry Partners: Jain Irrigation, DOW Chemical
Precision irrigation on golf courses with soil moisture sensors and mapping Metadata 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12
Principal Investigator: Chase Straw, Ph.D. Texas A&M AgriLife Research
Industry Partners: The Toro Company, United States Golf Association
2020
Advancing the development of the Parallel 41 Flux Network (continued from 2019 and 2018) Metadata 1 , 2 , 3
Principal Investigators: Christopher Neale, Ph.D., Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Eduardo Santos, Ph.D.,
Kansas State University
Industry Partners: LI-COR
Optimizing irrigation of turfgrass with precision technology Metadata
Principal Investigator: Jay Ham, Ph.D., Colorado State University, Cathie Lavis, Ph.D., Kansas State University
Industry Partners: The Toro Company, AeXonis
Toward pivot automation with proximal sensing for maize & soybean in the Great Plains Metadata
Principal Investigator: Derek Heeren, Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Industry Partners: USDA-ARS-Bushland, TX, Valmont Industries
Precision irrigation water management with remote sensing in California orchards Metadata 1 , 2 , 3
Prinicpal Investigator: Dilruba Yeasmin, Ph.D., Fresno State University
Industry Partners: WiseConn USA, Irrometer
An economic impact study of the irrigation industry
Principal Investigators: George Oamek Ph.D., Headwaters Association, John Farner, Irrigation Association
University Partners: Colorado State University, Kansas State University, Fresno State University, Texas A&M University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Connecting field scale performance to watershed health: the added power of sharing data Metadata
Principal Investigator: Dayle McDermitt, Ph.D. Nebraska Water Balance Alliance
Industry Partners: Growers Information Services Cooperative, Olsson Engineering, Twin Platte Natural Resources District
Onsite solar nitrogen production Data and Discussion Paper
Principal Investigator: Niko Pinkowski, Ph.D., Nitricity
University Partner: Charles Hillyer, Fresno State University
Testing landscape irrigation flow sensors
Principal Investigator: Brent Mecham, Ph.D., Irrigation Association-retired
Field Testing of a new protocol for evaluating weather-based irrigation controllers
Principal Investigator: Mark Crookston Ph.D., Northern Water
Wireless sensors for modeling crop evapotranspiration
Principal Investigators: Matthw Lurtz, Ph.D. candidate and Ryan R. Morrison Ph.D., Colorado State University
Measuring crop water use with a novel Internet-of-Things sap-flow system
Principal Investigators: Maria C. Capurro, Ph.D. candidate, Allan Andales, Ph.D., Jay Ham Ph.D., Colorado State University
Calibration and evaluation of a multi-scale spatially distributed ET algorithm
Principal Investigators: Principal Investigators: José Chávez, Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: Northern Water
2019
Satellite and UAS imagery used to apply timely irrigation strategies Metadata 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Principal Investigators: José Chávez, Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: Lindsay Corporation
Vertical irrigation solutions with machine learning Metadata 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
Principal Investigator: Joshua Craver, Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: Vertical Irrigation LLC
Improving maize production with subsurface drip irrigation Metadata 1 , 2 , 3
Principal Investigator: Freddie Lamm, Ph.D., Kansas State University
New Soil Moisture Technology for Improving Landscape Irrigation Management
Principal Investigator: Jay Ham Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: The Toro Company
Expanding the Parallel 41 flux network (continued from 2018)
Principal Investigator: Christopher Neale, Ph.D., Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Industry Partner: LI-COR
Reducing nutrient runoff in surface-irrigated sugarbeets
Principal Investigator: Erik Wardle, Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: Western Sugar
Low pressure and low flow media filtration system
Principal Investigator: Kaomine Vang Ph.D., Fresno State University
Industry Partner: Perigo LLC
Artificial neural network model Metadata
Principal Investigator: Fayzul Pasha, Ph.D., Fresno State University
Industry Partners: WiseConn, AgH2O, Dynamax, JAIN Irrigation, Irrometer
Irrigation and pumping plant efficiency tool Metadata
Principal Investigator: Joel Schneekloth Ph.D., Colorado State University Extension
Industry Partners: EPRI, Tri-state G&T
Irrigation scheduling with remote sensing under full and deficit irrigation
Principal Investigators: José Chávez, Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: Colorado Corn
2018
Predictive modeling of delivered water utilizing power consumption data
Principal Investigator: Davide Zoldoske, Ph.D., Fresno State University
Industry Partners: REDtrac, Madera Pumps, and McCrometer
Radio wave moisture sensing technology
Principal Investigator: Davide Zoldoske, Ph.D., Fresno State University
Industry Partner: Digital Springs, LLC
Remote sensing-based decision support with micro-satellites & ground-based data Metadata
Principal Investigators: José Chávez, Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: Lindsay Corporation
Underground wireless networks for soil moisture sensing and irrigation water management
Principal Investigator: Jay Ham Ph.D., Colorado State University
Industry Partner: The Toro Company
Transforming eddy covariance flux stations for real-time data delivery Metadata
Principal Investigator: Christopher Neale, Ph.D., Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Industry Partner: LI-COR, The Climate Corporation