US Egypt Cooperative Research: New Approach for Measuring Crop Evapotranspiration and Updating Crop Coefficients in Egypt

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1104062 This project supports a cooperative research project by Dr. Richard Snyder, University of California at Davis and Dr. Hassan E-Banna Osman, Agricultural Research Institute (ARC) in Cairo, Egypt and Dr. Atef Swelam, ICARDA, Cairo, Egypt. They plan to work on developing new methodologies to measure actual evapotranspiration (ETc) in Egypt. This will help the Egyptian water policy planners. The goals of this project are to (1) refine and use the SIMETAW model for water demand planning in Egypt and (2) use the calibrated Surface Renewal method (SR) to develop and update crop coefficient (Kc) values for various crops by region in Egypt. Also, this project aims to develop training materials to extend the methodology to the water resources engineers, agronomists, extension agents, and growers. The SIMETAW application program and surface renewal are being used by the State of California to estimate the demand for irrigation water to improve agriculture water resources management. It has the potential to greatly improve our knowledge about the demand for water in crops in Egypt and it will help farmers with on-farm irrigation efficiency. Information on water demand is also needed to efficiently manage water supply and delivery in the Nile Delta and other regions in Egypt. The proposal is to develop and collect the information needed to apply the SIMETAW model for all agro-ecological zones in Egypt and to run the model, test its accuracy, and modify the program as needed to provide the Egyptian irrigation engineers with better statistics on water use under different conditions. In addition, this project will identify where more reference evapotranspiration (ETo) stations are needed to improve the spatial estimation of ETo over Egypt. The PIs will work jointly to install and operate surface renewal stations to measure crop evapotranspiration and to determine crop coefficients. This will help growers to improve their on-farm irrigation efficiency, and it will help Egyptian water management specialists and hydrologists to better manage water flows through the irrigation networks in Egypt. The effort will be beneficial to both the economy and the environment. The first year of the project will mainly be devoted to training, installation of SR stations, and basic data collection. In the second and third years, cooperators will collect data from SR stations to determine ETc and Kc values for various important crops. The third year will focus on educational materials, publishing and dissemination of the project findings.Intellectual merits: The proposed activity involves application of a water demand model in Egypt and development of crop coefficients for various crop types in Egypt. The research uses surface renewal method to estimate evapotranspiration over Egypt. Software for water budget determination and management over varied croplands has been developed over a number of years, mainly using California locations for testing and calibration. Application to other climates and cropland situations is required to test and calibrate the software. This will be provided by the work in Egypt. Technology transfer will be conducted with workshops and materials. Broader impacts: Overall water is a critical resource whose management affects all aspects of human life. Agriculture is the biggest water consumer and so better management pays off substantially. This work will contribute to this goal, and is highly important in a region (Middle East) where water is likely to be a contentious issue among nations as well. The research will help scientists in Egypt to devise better methods to estimate evapotranspiration and get better estimates of surface energy budget, and thus help manage water resources better. The research can provide information on exchange coefficients over an arid region. This proposal is supported under the US-Egypt Joint Fund Program where NSF supports the US side and the Government of Egypt funds the Egyptian side.