Water grows resilience

Navigating freshwater scarcity and weather extremes is daunting, but there’s good news: More tools, data, and knowledge exist to support effective irrigation management than ever before.

IIC supports applied research and programming to shift awareness and encourage science-supported, conservation-oriented action involving diverse actors working with irrigated systems.

IIC current body of work builds on a network and legacy of funding collaborative public-private research activities from 2018-2023.

What we do:

Conduct and communicate results from applied research

Advance understanding about the impacts of advanced irrigation and input management on bottom lines and greenhouse gas emissions

Convene and engage diverse partners to encourage broader alignment and support for water, energy, and soil resource stewardship linked to irrigated systems

Current projects:

Two popular educational programs with a track record of success in supporting producers—Testing Ag Performance Solutions (TAPS) and Master Irrigator—are expanding through multistate collaboration involving partners across the High Plains states and in other key irrigation-dependent agricultural regions of the U.S.
IIC co-leads this collaborative initiative with partners at Kansas State University, University of Nebraska Lincoln, Oklahoma State University, and Texas A&M. Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in five states—Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas—has committed over $4M in Inflation Reduction Act funding for this work. Diverse partners including producers, commodity groups, input and seed companies, agricultural technology providers, are contributing matching funds, in-kind expertise, equipment, and/or other support.
Project activitives:
Strengthening and expanding TAPS and Master Irrigator programs, tracking conservation outcomes
Supporting producers in effectively using precision and advanced management tools and strategies
Benchmarking impacts of advanced management on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and testing related new climate-smart related incentives, including rewards for water stewardship
Linking irrigated cropping and livestock production value chains as a common community of practice committed to supporting productive and conservation-oriented irrigated systems management
Informing evidence-based policy and governance by convening critical conversations that engage and fuse diverse agricultural sector expertise
Trout Unlimited and agricultural partners, with assistance from the NRCS, the Irrigation Innovation Consortium based at Colorado State University (CSU), the Colorado Water Center, and consultants, will demonstrate the use of Long-Range Low Power Area Networks (LoRa) to improve wild flood and furrow irrigation water management. This work is sited at irrigated mountain valleys above 5,500 feet elevation within Colorado’s Gunnison River and Rio Grande Basins.
Trout Unlimited is working with 8 EQIP-eligible producers to deploy LoRa networks as a low-cost, high-impact tool to improve irrigation management, providing upgraded irrigation infrastructure to producers at no-cost as an incentive to participate in the project and as compensation for the time associated with piloting the technology.
Expected project benefits for participating producers include increased production, improved soil health, labor savings, water savings, and increased understanding of crop water needs and water use.
Expected environmental benefits include water quality improvements from reduced run off, reduced stream temperatures, increased flows in the source of supply/return flows, and maintained wet meadow habitat and groundwater levels.
This team is working to 1) develop and share custom evapotranspiration (ET) based tools; 2) apply those tools to evaluate impacts of water conservation investments on ET and quantify consumptive water use; and 3) support USDA Climate Hubs training capacity and stakeholder engagement efficacy, raising awareness and encouraging decision-making pertinent to boosting near- and longer-term drought resilience in agriculture.
This work seeks to address key knowledge gaps and timely pressing questions such as: How much water is needed to support irrigation within a given basin? What changes in consumptive use of water have resulted from past and ongoing interventions and investments in water conservation and irrigation efficiency?

The big picture: how our work adds up

Society is in a race to balance water supply and demand, with pressure from extreme climate events and population growth butting up against dwindling water resource availability and quality.

Here’s some examples of how IIC works to support irrigators, water managers, the irrigation industry :

— Water supply —

— Water demand —

Water flow rate

A new flow sensor testing protocol was developed to help homeowners and landscape managers conserve water, protect plants, and avoid site damage and water quality issues, irrigation system component failures, and overwatering.

System run time

Improving algorithms providing real-time water use estimates calculated using electrical run-time on center pivots, encouraging water use awareness and management in two Nebraska Natural Resources Districts

Irrigation area

Mobile drip irrigation, pictured above, was tested in the Texas High Plains to evaluate potential water savings and cost-effectiveness of updating existing center pivot infrastructure with this new technology with shitst to high-value cropping systems.

Irrigation depth

IIC research is paving the way to eliminate guesswork for irrigators by improving scheduling tools that integrate soil moisture, crop water, crop stand temperature and weather data to automatically trigger center pivot water deliveries.

Let’s Collaborate

Case Studies

Featured

Economic Impact of the Irrigation Equipment and Services Industry

Factors influencing spending on irrigation equipment and related services differ for crop production, horticulture, and, landscaping sectors. To better understand these trends, the Irrigation Association partnered with IIC to estimate irrigation system expenditures over the past decade.

Community concerns, social networks ground N. Texas study

Aiming to drive social innovation, this research team is using a range of strategies to generate data and trust in alternative lower water use management strategies to support farmers in dealing with hot, dry conditions and declining groundwater supplies.

Advancing golf course fairway irrigation management

The golf course industry faces increasing pressure to reduce management inputs, particularly irrigation. A two-part research study evaluated water management saving strategies for fairways and surveyed golf course superintendents nationwide regarding their adoption of advanced irrigation tools and strategies.

“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 submission process

Previous research

See full descriptions of projects here

2023

Multi-stakeholder dialogues for resilience planning to sustain irrigated cattle feed and forage systems Water scarcity issues, which are being aggravated by climate change, require adaptive management approaches to sustain cattle feeding in the American West. This project supported a series of targeted dialogues involving feedyard mangers, hydrology experts, and others to identify critical research priorities, partnership opportunities, and potential action steps to raise awareness of and reduce risk associated with beef industry supply and value chain stakeholders that depend on irrigated production of feed and forage.

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

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