Progress 05/15/15 to 11/14/17
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:As noted in the accomplishments, much of the work ended up focusing on collecting and synthesizing basic data about irrigation water use. While we had envisioned doing some amount of economic analysis, obtaining the water use data was the more fundamental data need on which other analyses would follow. Additionally, once a clearer picture of water use and water sources was obtained, it became relatively clear of the practical constraints on irrigation given the distance of water sources from many farms. Besides simply economic constraints, because water sources were not necessarily adjacent to many farms, these farms would not have water access rights. This reality led us to focus our efforts on the concept of an irrigation district that would act as a water purveyor to farms without direct access to surface water. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project provided support to train three different graduate students. The graduate students gained familiarity with fundamental research methods including data collection, statistical analysis, and survyeing techniques. In addition they gained knowledge on water management practices in the eastern U.S., particulary in regards to agriculture. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Much of the project became focused on Objective A.2. This consisted of collecting and synthesizing different data sets that provided a more complete picture of water usage rates and water supply sources for farms across Western New York. While we had initially hoped to use direct surveys of farms to obtain much of this information, we found we needed to use a multi-prong approach. We used telephone surveys to collect data from 30 farms. However, besides this, we incorporated data from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that provided multi-year water use rates and indicated water use variations in time. Additionally, we obtained permission to access individual records of the USDA Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey that provided supplemental information of controls on usage rates, albeit for one snapshot in time. With these multiple data sources, we were able to draw several important conclusions. We found that most irrigaters were large farms that would irrigate several hundred acres. Across these large farms, water use was generaly divided between both groundwater and surface water sources. In terms of surface water use, there were usually at most only three water users on any one stream. Thus, there did not appear to be the likelihood for widespread competition for water. However, on some of these streams, streamflow during dry years did drop to nearly the same level as water demand. Irrigaters therefore appeared to face constaints due to natural conditions and not so much competition from others. This observation of limited summer streamflow on natural streams led us to focus on the potential for better taking advantage of the New York State Barge Canal (the old Erie Canal) as a possible source of irrigation water. The Barge Canal conveys water from Lake Erie into Western New York. While there are some small users of canal water, most of the largest farms are located several miles away and cannot directly access the canal. Without any in-depth analysis, it became obvious that most typical farms do not have the economic means to make capital investments to access this more reliable source of water (Objective A.4.). Therefore as part of our capacity building effort (Objective B), we have been focused on developing a proposal to formalize an irrigation district in Western New York that would construct lateral pipelines from the canal to allow canal water to be distributed across a larger area. To data, we have submitted a proposal to the Barge Canal Authorities "Reimagine the Canal" competition that seeks opportunities for investments in the canal. The proposal consisted of a team of the two PI's of this award( Shaw and Selfa) as well as staff from Cornell Coopertive Extension and a local engineering firm. We are still awaiting the outcome of this proposal submission.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Ivancic, T.J. and S.B. Shaw. 2017. Identifying Spatial Clustering in Change Points of Streamflow across the Contiguous U.S. between 1945 and 2009. Geophysical Research Letters. 44:2445-2453. (doi: 10.1002/2016GL072444)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Shaw, S.B. 2017. Does an upper limit to river water temperature apply in all places? Hydrological Processes. 31:3729-3739. (doi: 10.1002/hyp.11297)
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Progress 05/15/15 to 05/14/16
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:The project has basically progressed along the originally planned timeline. However, we anticipate requesting a 1-year extension to provide additional time to synthesize results and to possibly have one additional summer of data collection in the summer of 2017. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two graduate students were engaged in this project. One student worked from May 2015 to September 2015, and the other worked from September 2015 to May 2016. Both were engaged in developing the farmer surveys and learned best practices in terms of developing call lists, gaining Institutional Review Board approval, conducting the surveys, compiling the data, and analyzing the data. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We anticipate collecting information from 30 on-farm interviews this coming summer. We plan to compile these additional surveys with the 30+ interviews we currently have, with remote sensing information on crop extent, and with information from the USDA Ranch and Farm Irrigation survey to establish a comprehensive picture of irrigation water use in western NYS.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
A. The majority of the effort this past year was focusd on collecting information on sources and quantities of farm water use (Objective A2). As part of this effort, we reviewed publicly available permitting information on non-potable water use from NYS DEC and the NYS Barge Canal Authority. In addition we conducted our own phone interview of over 30 farmers in Western NY. These interviews were 15 to 30 minutes in length and resulted in information on waer sources, water quantities used, crops irrigated, and typical irirgation equipment used. We are in the process of coordinating additional on-farm data collection that will be carried out by Cornell Cooperative Extension. B. We made several new personal connections that should be of value in future work. In particular, we established a working relationship with Dr. Darcy Telenko from Cornell Cooperative Extension in western New York State. Dr. Telenko is currently assisting us in collecting on-farm water use information. Additionally, in terms of capacity building, Dr. Shaw and Dr. Selfa submitted a proposal to the dual NSF/USDA INFEWS call with teh assistance of two additional PI's (one from SUNY ESF and the other from Syracuse University). Preliminary work from this project was used within the proposal. Dr. Telenko was also included as a collaborator on the proposal.
Publications
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