Model of irrigation management on green spaces

Abstract

The presented Model of Irrigation Management was designed for application on green spaces and leisure areas.

The Model recognizes water as a production key-factor and optimizes its use on the irrigation of green spaces, giving particular attention to the temporal and spatial variation of input variables.

Variables entered in the Model included existing or future target plant species, phenological phases, type of soil (i.e. location and physical characteristics), topography and climate factors.

Model construction was similar to the methods outlined in FAO Report 56, namely: the method of Penman-Monteith for the calculation of reference evapotranspiration, the use of dual cultural coefficients to obtain cultural evapotranspiration and the opportunity of irrigation according to the hydric balance.

The Model integrates the programming of algorithms implemented in Visual Basic 6, VB6 and a Geographic Information System (GIS).

The Model provides the irrigation pa­rameters in real-time scale, the timings for irrigation, depth per irrigation, the period of irrigation, time between two irrigation episodes, and for the sprinkle irrigation, the mean application rate and the degree of pulverization.

The Model is used in association with an automatic weather station and irrigation system.