Irrigation management is about controlling the rate, amount, and timing of applied irrigation water in a planned and efficient manner. The purpose of irrigation management is to effectively use available irrigation water in managing and controlling the soil moisture environment of crops to promote the desired crop response, to minimize soil degradation, and to protect water quality. Proper irrigation management requires a good understanding of soil properties, soil-water-plant relationships, crop type and sensitivity to drought stress, crop growth stages, availability of a water supply, and climatic factors that affect crop water use such as rainfall, temperature, humidity, and net radiation. Equipped with this knowledge, an irrigator can develop a workable and efficient irrigation scheduling program.

Our irrigation management philosophy is to use available water efficiently to meet crop water requirements for maximum water productivity by utilizing crop-specific irrigation management strategies. Generally, the goal is to ensure that water is available at germination and early development by applying light, frequent irrigations (if there is no rainfall) for vigorous growth, and to replenish and increase available soil water content in the entire root zone during pre-flowering growth stages to allow irrigation systems to keep up to crop demand during the peak water use period, which typically occurs during flowering and fruit-formation growth stages. Crop-specific irrigation management strategies are usually applied to adjust for differences among crops in their effective root zones, sensitivity to water stress, types (cool verses warm season), vulnerability to diseases at various crop growth stages, soil fertility levels, plant population, physiologic maturity (timing of last irrigation), and potential income.

Reports

• Irrigation Management in Alberta
• Optimum Seeding Date and Rates for Irrigated Grain and Oilseed Crops
• Alfalfa Hay
• Barley
• Canola
• Dry Bean
• Pea
• Potato
• Silage Corn
• Spring Wheat
• Sugar Beet
• Timothy Hay
• Winter Wheat

The Alberta Irrigation Management Model (AIMM) is a decision support tool software package that assists irrigation producers with their irrigation scheduling decisions. The AIMM software runs as a Windows based program and has a agronomic record keeping component incorporated into the program as well. AIMM acquires the climate parameters required to calculate Evapotranspiration (ET) and irrigation recommendations from the AIMM website. Producers simply choose the station that is closest to their irrigation field from any of the current climate stations on-line.

The Irrigation Scheduler Mobile is a free irrigation scheduling tool developed by Washington State University that is designed for use on a smart phone or on a desktop web browser for doing simplified check-book style irrigation scheduling. It uses tables of default crop and soil parameters, and automatically pulls daily crop water use (evapotranspiration, or ET) estimates from Alberta's Irrigation Management Climate Information Network (IMCIN). It works as a native app (Google Play and Apple App Store), a web app, and as a stand alone website for access from anywhere. To use the mobile irrigation scheduler you must have an AgWeatherNet user name and password.