Learn 4 Water Crisis Ogalla Aquifer

Under the bread basket of the United States lies a valuable resource of water that includes South Dekota Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. These are the regions that supplies at least one fifth of the total annual U.S. agricultural harvest. If the aquifer goes dry, more than $20 billion worth of food and fiber will vanish from the world’s markets. And scientists say it will take natural processes 6,000 years to refill the reservoir. In some places the reservoir is already gone and it will affect the future of the crops in these areas. It is up to responsible farmers and scientific breakthroughs in drought resistant crops to make the most out of every drop of water that is used from this precious resource.
We are in a world water crisis and we need to evoke water conservation efforts such as " Nolan Clark started with ARS 37 years ago, people predicted there would be no more water in the Ogallala Aquifer by the year 2000. “We’ve proven that wrong—since we’re not out of water,” says Clark. “But we need to develop new science and technology to make sure we can say that again in 2050. We’re now in a worldwide
water crisis, not just local crises.” Clark, an agricultural engineer, is director of the ARS
Conservation and Production Research Laboratory in Bushland, Texas,and now oversees the Ogallala Aquifer Program, an ARS-state university consortium focused on large-scale regional problems and their

research solutions.. Dan Upchurch, director of ARS’s Southern Plains Area, agrees that “water is the most important issue facing farmers worldwide. The Ogallala Aquifer Program began in 2004, when I was
director of the ARS Cropping Systems Research Laboratory in Lubbock, Texas, and my involvement continues,” Upchurch says. “It fits the mission of the Lubbock and Bushland labs perfectly, and it brings in
university expertise in groundwater hydrology and economic analyses. We pool our resources, including colleagues skilled in agricultural education, communications, irrigation technologies, water management,
crop genetics, cropping systems, and concentrated animal feeding operations.”

There is a problem of the high cost of pumping the water that exists in the aquifer at this time so it makes the situation even more complicated.
Timing the irrigation systems so that they turn on and off at the precise time is what Susan O’Shaughnessy is working on. She is agricultural engineer in ARS’s Soil and Water Management Research Unit at Bushland Texas and is making the time-temperature threshold (TTT) system wireless, so it can be commercialized. They discovered from the ARS program that most plants grow best at a certain temprature so keeping this all in balance will help the conservation of water. O’Shaughnessy is also testing photo diode sensors that, by detecting reflected light, can help determine whether plants are stressed by lack of water or disease. They can also distinguish bare areas where no plants are growing. Eventually the photo diode sensors will be mounted
alongside the thermal sensors on the center pivots.
In Colby Kansas they are looking at other forms of irrigation to conserve the Ogallala.. the number of drip irrigation acres is growing as research points to its possible advantages in conserving Ogallala water,” says Paul Colaizzi, an agricultural engineer at Bushland. Colaizzi is working with Freddie Lamm, an agricultural engineer at Kansas State University’s Northwest Research-Extension Center at Colby, Kansas, to
find the best irrigation systems and designs for each major crop in their locations. They are re comparing subsurface drip irrigation (SDI)—buried irrigation lines—to two different center pivot overhead spray systems.
They found that, with deficit irrigation, sorghum yields with SDI were slightly higher than with center pivot, while with full irrigation, sorghum yields were slightly lower with SDI. Deficit irrigation uses less than optimal rates of irrigation water.Colaizzi thinks the higher yield with SDI is “because it virtually eliminates soil-surface water evaporation and directs more of the water to the plant. But fully irrigating a field with drip irrigation might
be giving the plant too much water, slightly decreasing yields,” Colaizzi says. “The water may be concentrating around the plant roots and blocking aeration and also draining plant nutrients too far down for plant roots to reach.” Their goal is to use less total water and still produce good yields. “We want to use the water more efficiently, but not just to spread it over more land. We want to actually lower the total amount of water
pumped out of the aquifer,” Colaizzi says.ARS agricultural engineer Prasanna Gowda, also at Bushland, is
determining the Ogallala’s recharge rate. Clark says, “We already know the amount of rainfall we get, so if we
learn the evapotranspiration (ET) rate for each crop, then we can calculate the actual recharge rate of the aquifer in various parts of the Great Plains states.”Gowda uses a scintillometer that employs laser light to measure the
amount of turbulence caused by heat waves over crops. These are the wavy currents of air you see on hot days, especially over paved areas, but they also occur over plants and warm soil. These turbulent heat waves are a function of temperature and humidity fluctuations in the air. They’re also a measure of heat changes that help determine how much water the crops are using. The more turbulent the heat waves, the
higher the water use.They eventually want to send out emails to farmers on the daily ET rate of crops so that farmers can adjust accordingly.

ARS plant physiologist James Mahan, also at Lubbock, is one of the original theorists of the preferred temperature ranges of plants and using them as the basis for knowing when to irrigate. He and
colleagues packaged a system called “BIOTIC” that was recently licensed to the company SMART CROP for commercial production. Mahan sees BIOTIC helping the world deal with the new
reality of water-deficit management. “Water has become the major cost in farming the Ogallala region,” he says.

As you can see the Ogallala is the most important water resource for farmers in the United States and that Texas is leading the way for water conservatorship.-

Information taken in part or wh*** from these articles.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-ogallala-aquifer
http://www.npwd.org/new_page_2.htm
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/apr08/aquifer0408.htm