ABSTRACT
Energy requirements and security of food production will be improved by increasing the water use efciency of existing irrigation systems. Agriculture uses 70%−80% of allocated global freshwaters for irrigation, and in recent years increased dependence on irrigation to sustain food production for the global community is depleting freshwater resources in many parts of the world below sustainable limits. These pressures can be reduced by optimizing irrigation scheduling. Technological advances in irrigation, mainly in automated and semiautomated sprinkler irrigation systems, allow application of water with millimeter precision at a xed position. In addition, variable rate sprinkler systems can apply different depths of water to different positions. This chapter presents and demonstrates a geographical information systems (GIS) decision support tool for a soil-based automated variable rate irrigation (VRI) sprinkler system.
