Recipient Organization
HydroBio
1220 Cero Gordo Rd
Santa Fe,NM 87501
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
According to the USDA (2012) approximately 80% of the Nation's consumptive water use, and over 90% in many western states, is used in agriculture. Groundwater provides over 50 billion gallons per day for agricultural needs. Long term water level declines caused by sustained groundwater pumping for agriculture are impacting the environment at large and the agricultural community specifically. Farmers are painfully aware of these facts because they affect the future livelihood of their farms and communities. Using software to streamline, automate, and reduce irrigation by as little as 10% can save the average farmer between $47,000 and $318,000 annually. Significant conservation can arise through rational irrigation and so, the economic incentive for the grower aligns well with the overarching need for agricultural sector to contribute to the conservation of aquifers, energy and other resources. HydroBio, Inc. developed an innovative software product, Targeted Irrigation Management (TIM) to provide farmers with an easy-to-use irrigation decision support system that is being applied initially for center pivot irrigation systems. The software uses weather data and Earth observation satellite (EOS) data analyzed through proprietary methods to estimate the precise water needs of each field. Coupled with online pivot monitoring and control units TIM automated software enables the grower to deliver an optimal irrigation strategy to his field from his computer, tablet, or smart-phone that includes (1) the previous day's water use map, (2) daily and weekly irrigation schedules based on crop water use and soil water banking, (3) strategies for preparing and storing soil water to meet irrigation deficits during times when crop requirements exceed pumping capacity, (4) pivot speed control to apply the exact amount of water to different crops, the same crop started at different times, or serving sectors of the field that grow with different vigor, and (5) data storage and retrieval to permit the grower to assess for each field what has worked best and where to improve, all at a granularity of one-ninth of an acre. HydroBio received a USDA SBIR Phase I award that funded the transition between conceptual science and proof that TIM is sound and commercially viable. Phase II funding will enable gathering and testing the data necessary for launching TIM commercially. These data include measurements of soil water, enhancing workflows, and proofing data input and output in a 2013-2014 beta test on a target population of 250 center pivots in the north Texas Panhandle. In response to grower requests, a suite of TIM tools was developed during Phase I to provide maps, updated every 72 hours, upon receipt of new EOS data, of relative crop yield, potential crop problems (e.g. pests), and for optimizing inputs for the crop to enhance return on investment. Through the medium of the internet and wireless technology, coupled with responsiveness to irrigated agriculture needs and grower feedback, HydroBio aspires to provide scalable tools for precision irrigation and crop management delivered throughout the world. Phase I funded the transition from conceptual science to proof concepts and data calculation necessary preparation for on-the-ground, near real time, and sub acre precision agriculture. Phase II funding provides a final transition from beta test to full commercialization.
Animal Health Component
70%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
70%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
During the Phase II research, HydroBio will use the successful results from Phase I, to test and evaluate all data input and output of Targeted Irrigation Management (TIM) in preparation to enter the market. Phase II will address the series of research priorities identified in Phase I that will select and test the complete suite of data necessary for TIM to provide optimal irrigation prescriptions plus deliver additional services that have been requested by cooperating growers. TIM add-on services will track residual soil water storage on a daily basis, provide drought preparation in the form of the Critical Soil Water Function, assess crop performance, and assess relative yield. During the Phase II research, HydroBio will use the successful results from Phase I, to test and evaluate all data input and output of Targeted Irrigation Management (TIM) in preparation to enter the market. Phase II will address the series of research priorities identified in Phase I that will select and test the complete suite of data necessary for TIM to provide optimal irrigation prescriptions plus deliver additional services that have been requested by cooperating growers. TIM add-on services will track residual soil water storage on a daily basis, provide drought preparation in the form of the Critical Soil Water Function, assess crop performance, and assess relative yield. The overarching research priority for Phase II is to perform irrigation prescriptions at 9 pixels per acre using TIM, to test operational accuracy and to test data quality that feeds to TIM. Phase II will be a large scale test of TIM, with the cooperation of Karlyle Haaland, CEO of PivoTrac Monitoring, enrolling at least 250 center pivots in the northern Texas Panhandle with enrollment to start in March, 2013. Identified Phase II technical goals that will be addressed: How well does TIM perform in near real-time to prescribe crop irrigation and assess potential yield. What are the best market penetration methods, and how can this input be provided in simplified form to influence grower decisions? Assess needed soil water data and its collection, including how can starting soil water storage be assessed for TIM calculations? Can GIS interpolation of over-winter precipitation be used to predict starting soil moisture? Can infiltration be predicted given slope, texture and magnitude/duration from tipping bucket rain gauges? What is the accuracy and potential application of a simple probe-based season-start soil water measurement?
Project Methods
The focus for Phase II is to address the technical objectives through (1) cooperation with a large group of producers, crop consultants and agriculture extension professionals in the Texas Panhandle, (2) to fully understand and incorporate ancillary data needs for soil moisture, and (3) preparation for full commercial release with analytic software that addresses customer concerns and needs. This focus is addressed by five tasks in the Work Plan. Task 1. Outreach, field visits, data transfer and cooperation During Phase I, HydroBio had constructed a Geographic Information System(GIS). Focusing efforts in the Texas Panhandle, HydroBio will utilize this GIS database. New and existing relationships will provide the experimental fields to accomplish Technical Objective 1. A suite of 250 center pivots were targeted for enrollment in Targeted Irrigation Management (TIM) beta testing during 2013. Professional assistance is sought by HydroBio to augment areas of expertise that are needed for Phase II. HydroBio has developed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the USDA ARS Lincoln, Nebraska office to provide guidance on experimental design, data collection and analysis for identification and incorporation of needed ancillary soil water estimation. HydroBio is also currently cooperating with Texas AgriLife Extension in Amarillo and a group of regional crop consultants to help assess remote sensing techniques. Outreach and ongoing cooperation with the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District (NPGCD) will continue through 2013. HydroBio will prescribe irrigation prescriptions for a center pivot with our expert system to be compared to a pivot that will be operated according to present practices. Both fields will receive complete soil water monitoring during the study, and yield data will be collected. HydroBio's strategic cooperator, PivoTrac Monitoring of Dalhart, TX will facilitate the introduction of TIM to the Texas Panhandle and the enrollment of pivots from the 7,500 pivots that they monitor. HydroBio's staff agricultural engineer has been invited to share office space with our cooperator PivoTrac Monitoring, as an in-kind contribution for the 2013 Phase II program. HydroBio's Texas staff will serve the irrigation community, receive the feedback necessary to optimize TIM and present information about TIM to growers, agronomists and interested professionals. Additionally, HydroBio personnel will routinely visit a subsample of fields in benchmark locations that are operating under TIM care to photograph the crop and document soil water content (manually), and discuss the irrigation prescription with growers. Staff will be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for phone and email consultation throughout the growing season. Task 2. Season-start soil water assessment A simple soil probe will be used to find the wetting front of the 250 fields targeted for enrollment in the 2013 TIM beta testing. Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) data for depthwise available soil water content at field capacity will be multiplied by the depth of the wetting front to generate estimates of total starting soil water. The Plant Available Soil Water (PASW) for each location will be compared to the total winter precipitation spatially interpolated from the 446 tipping bucket rain gauges operated through the PivoTrac Monitoring network in the Panhandle study region. Along with this analysis data validation will be done by comparing measured soil water to the closest grouping of rain gauges. This analysis will be in cooperation with ARS Lincoln through our CRADA and will include cross checking the accuracy of PASW from SSURGO spatial data with PASW from textural analysis of samples pulled from the cooperating fields. Task 3. Assess other soil water estimation and measurement methods and equipment Guidance through the CRADA with ARS Lincoln will be used to assess infiltration of rainfall from summer storms taking into account spatially-available data such as SSURGO texture, digital elevation model-derived field slopes and spatially interpolated rainfall magnitude/duration data. Following large magnitude summer rain events that will be captured through the 446 PivoTrac tipping bucket rain gauges, HydroBio personnel will visit the spatially-interpolated rainfall epicenters to record where runoff was generated (if it is generated), and collect photographic documentation, notes and GPS points. Leveraging the expertise of staff at the USDA ARS-Lincoln, the TIM program is expected to provide a first approximation of infiltration when paired with digital elevation model terrain data, soil properties from SSURGO and cropping information from the grower. It is understood that runoff relationships can be complex, but what is needed is a simple and robust approximator of residual infiltration. CRADA guidance will also be sought for the use of soil water sensors that provide a digital output (calibration curves for some sensors are maintained by ARS Lincoln) and are amenable to telemetry so that the data can be gathered remotely. Such sensors may be used to measure soil water gains directly within TIM software if infiltration cannot be approximated to the required accuracy. The best case result from the CRADA with ARS Lincoln would be verification that the TIM algorithm is sufficiently accurate to schedule irrigation and track soil water with only measured season-start water storage plus a simple algorithm to decrement infiltration from high intensity storms. If this finding is correct and verifiable, TIM can fulfill a mission to support irrigated agriculture over thousands of square miles with minimal ancillary soil measurements. Task 4. Irrigation prescriptions, management tools, and field verification Satellite imagery from Deimos (nine pixels per acre) will be received from our industry partner, Astrium-GEO every three days which will be processed automatically using TIM software that will be checked regularly by human oversight. Astrium-GEO has offered a 45% discount on satellite imagery as an in-kind contribution for the Phase II program. A computer server will feed irrigation prescriptions and forward-looking irrigation strategies for each field to the appropriate grower via the Internet and through the PivoTrac Monitoring website. Field verification and farmer support will continue through the growing season to benchmark results, identify problems, and fine tune the applications. The look-ahead capability of TIM will be used to predict when the field may enter a severe irrigation deficit condition under no-rain conditions, calculate the number of acres that can be maintained with the existing water system to achieve full yields on the remaining portions of the field, and suggest poor performing regions of the field to be jettisoned. HydroBio will evaluate the accuracy of proprietary mid-season yield estimation. Field visits will include crop inspection through the season to visually assess remote sensing results for anticipated yield and to identify any issues unrelated to irrigation that might constrain the crop. Each product delivered to cooperating growers will be monitored through the season for customer satisfaction. Task 5. Feedback and integration from cooperating producers HydroBio will have professional staff living in the Texas study region for the season in order to provide maximum contact with cooperating producers and day to day presence to detect and solve problems. The relationships built in the Panhandle during SBIR Phase I will enable us to obtain necessary feedback and provide customer support so that the TIM output enters into their management decisions. This includes finding out how the producers are interfacing with the software and how they are applying the results. Customer concerns will be identified through the feedback and integration activities and dealt with promptly.