WISE irrigation scheduling as a service for the 2024 CSU Testing Ag Performance Solutions (TAPS) Competition
College of Agricultural Sciences
Soil and Crop Sciences
Larimer
County
(Kit Carson, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Weld)
- Agriculture
- Equal time spent on-campus and in the field
Primary Topic:
Agriculture
Other Topics:
Community & Economic Development
Internship Overview:
The Intern will work with mentors and other CSU scientists to implement the WISE irrigation scheduling tool, https://erams.com/catena/tools/agricultural-resources/irrigation-advisor/ and work with farmers and other competitors to use the tool for irrigation water management as a participant in the 2024 CSU TAPS competition at ARDEC South.
The CSU-TAPS (Testing Ag Performance Solutions) program (www.irrigationinnovation.org/csu-taps) is funded under CSU’s NRCS-funded “Climate Smart Advances in Ag Performance” Technical Agreement, and under a multi-year Water Plan Grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB).
CSU -TAPs was designed in 2022, in collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), as an interactive, real-life farm management competition that helps producers, researchers, tech providers, and others identify how to boost agricultural profitability, and increase input use efficiency. The program gives producers and others a hands-on, no-risk, competitive means to use water management technologies to support in-season decisions. Awards are given to competitors with the highest input use efficiency, and the most profit on their irrigated farm. We are now finishing the data analysis for our first season, 2023, where we hosted 20 teams competing under a sophisticated irrigation system at ARDEC S, near Fort Collins. The competitors are from 5 different NE Colorado counties and one from Nebraska. We expect a similar cadre of participants in the 2024 season.
The WISE irrigation scheduling tool was developed by Dr. Allan Andales and is hosted as an application on the eRAMS platform of OneWater Solutions Institute. WISE was made to make irrigation scheduling both convenient and as cost-effective as possible, maximizing crop yield and minimizing excess irrigation in easy steps. Our experience with the CSU TAPS competition in the 2023 season, is that farmers will be much more likely to use WISE, or any other scheduling tool, if the tool is setup and customized for their use. The Intern will work with the mentors, with the CSU TAPS manager, to setup WISE for competitors and assist them on a weekly basis in using the tool to assist them in making decisions about the time and amount of irrigation to be used on their TAPS plots.
The situation is ideal for an Internship, considering the very specific need of the TAPS program, and the high level of mentorship and support to be provided by the TAPS Principal Investigator (Martin), the develop of the WISE tool (Andales), and the AES water resources expert and TAPS irrigation advisor (Schneekloth). Conversely, CSU and the TAPS program will directly benefit from a focused internship to assist farms to adopt a very useful technology, and to collect the data and supporting information to assess who effective the irrigation tool actually is when used by farmers in a field setting.
The CSU-TAPS (Testing Ag Performance Solutions) program (www.irrigationinnovation.org/csu-taps) is funded under CSU’s NRCS-funded “Climate Smart Advances in Ag Performance” Technical Agreement, and under a multi-year Water Plan Grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB).
CSU -TAPs was designed in 2022, in collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), as an interactive, real-life farm management competition that helps producers, researchers, tech providers, and others identify how to boost agricultural profitability, and increase input use efficiency. The program gives producers and others a hands-on, no-risk, competitive means to use water management technologies to support in-season decisions. Awards are given to competitors with the highest input use efficiency, and the most profit on their irrigated farm. We are now finishing the data analysis for our first season, 2023, where we hosted 20 teams competing under a sophisticated irrigation system at ARDEC S, near Fort Collins. The competitors are from 5 different NE Colorado counties and one from Nebraska. We expect a similar cadre of participants in the 2024 season.
The WISE irrigation scheduling tool was developed by Dr. Allan Andales and is hosted as an application on the eRAMS platform of OneWater Solutions Institute. WISE was made to make irrigation scheduling both convenient and as cost-effective as possible, maximizing crop yield and minimizing excess irrigation in easy steps. Our experience with the CSU TAPS competition in the 2023 season, is that farmers will be much more likely to use WISE, or any other scheduling tool, if the tool is setup and customized for their use. The Intern will work with the mentors, with the CSU TAPS manager, to setup WISE for competitors and assist them on a weekly basis in using the tool to assist them in making decisions about the time and amount of irrigation to be used on their TAPS plots.
The situation is ideal for an Internship, considering the very specific need of the TAPS program, and the high level of mentorship and support to be provided by the TAPS Principal Investigator (Martin), the develop of the WISE tool (Andales), and the AES water resources expert and TAPS irrigation advisor (Schneekloth). Conversely, CSU and the TAPS program will directly benefit from a focused internship to assist farms to adopt a very useful technology, and to collect the data and supporting information to assess who effective the irrigation tool actually is when used by farmers in a field setting.
Goals, Scope and Objectives:
Goal: ensure the hands-on use of the WISE irrigation scheduling tool in the 2024 TAPS competition at ARDEC. Evaluate the barriers to adoption on operating farms in N.E. Colorado; assess the effectiveness of the scheduling tool for field use by comparing irrigation amounts, timing, associated costs, yields and revenues. The data and information to implement, assess and evaluate the tool will be fully supported by the extensive network of TAPS sensors, management, and analyses as a part of the fully funded TAPS 2024 competition. With guidance of the mentors and others, the intern will work directly with farmers to assist them with the WISE data requirements, data flow, and with interpreting and using the results.
With which stakeholder group(s) will the intern work?
CSU TAPS project management incl. Tim Martin, PI: Hannah Sutherland, project manager; Amy Kremen, manager of communications and partnerships; Allan Andales, irrigation advisor; Joel Schneekloth, irrigation advisor, extension and participant liason.
Farmers and water managers competing in TAPS. This year we had 20 teams and a total of 45 participants, most of whom are irrigated farm owners and managers.
CSU ARDEC staff for on-ground irrigation scheduling.
Irrigation Innovation Consortium staff including director, communications, and outreach specialist
Farmers and water managers competing in TAPS. This year we had 20 teams and a total of 45 participants, most of whom are irrigated farm owners and managers.
CSU ARDEC staff for on-ground irrigation scheduling.
Irrigation Innovation Consortium staff including director, communications, and outreach specialist
What student learning outcomes do you anticipate and what are the opportunities for professional development?
Learning opportunity is to work with the creator and developer of a sophisticated but highly user-oriented irrigation scheduling tool; interfacing directly with long-term historical weather data records provided by the State of CO and the National Weather Service, real-time data access from the permanent weather station at ARDEC; working directly with farmers to assist them to use the tool as a resource in the TAPS competition, and encourage its use in the farmer’s operations. Along with these outcomes are professional development opportunities for: model and tool development; working with researchers and academics; working directly with farmers; interacting with private sector sensor developers about their products and their utility in scheduling irrigation.
