Optimizing Beneficial Water Use
Joint effort studying ag water consumption in Southern New Mexico
By Nargiza Rakhimova
In a region with limited fresh water resources, the growing population in Southern New Mexico is facing fierce competition for water.
According to the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID), which serves 90,640 acres of agricultural and urban water users, irrigation is the largest consumer of water, yet the consumptive use by agricultural crops is often not reliably quantified. As the demand for water to meet municipal, recreational, irrigation and environmental requirements is increasing, it is becoming extremely important to plan and prepare for future water use.
Therefore, more accurate estimates of agricultural consumption or evapotranspiration (ET, the true loss from a hydrologic basin) are necessary.
A research team at New Mexico State University, led by Dr. Zohrab Samani and Dr. Salim Bawazir, civil engineering professors; Dr. Rhonda Skaggs, agriculture economics professor; undergraduate civil engineering student Brad Kirksey, and Max Bleiweiss, scientist for the Center for Applied Remote Sensing Agriculture, Meteorology and Environment, is tackling this research problem.
The team uses state-of-the-art technology (eddy covariance technique) to measure pecan and cotton ET on the ground. They also quantify the consumptive use of water by crops throughout New Mexico’s Lower Rio Grande region using 2002 remote sensing data.
This research is also receiving collaborative support through the National Science Foundation-Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF-EPSCoR), New Mexico’s Office of State Engineer, Governor Richardson’s Water Innovation Fund II Project and the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute.
According to Samani, the preliminary outcomes of this collaborative, field-level research have already produced interest.
“Last November our poster with the results of the crop ET study for Dona Ana County received second place in the 19th annual EPSCoR National Conference at Lexington, Kentucky,” Samani said. “Brad Kirksey, the only undergraduate student to compete in the conference, received an Award of Excellence for outstanding research.”
The team believes that this innovative research will provide invaluable knowledge about water consumption in Southern New Mexico. The team plans to extend their research to other regions and vegetation types.
