Towards water sustainability in agriculture through closed-loop irrigation

通过闭环灌溉实现农业用水的可持续性

• 批准号: 560301-2020
• 负责人: Liu, Jinfeng
• 金额: $ 6.29万
• 依托单位: University of Alberta
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Alliance Grants
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=721751
• 关键词: Towards; water; sustainability; agriculture; through

Water is essential for our daily life. The challenge of ensuring water and food security has been consistentlyrecognized as one of the most significant global risks by the World Economic Forum over the past decade.Population growth is the primary factor causing the global water supply crisis. The most substantial use offreshwater is in agriculture, which accounts for about 70% of the total freshwater consumption. In Canada,Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan are the top three irrigation water consumers. According to a report of theGovernment of Alberta, the water allocated to irrigation in Alberta is already capped. Any further increase inirrigated acres needs to come primarily from improvements in water efficiency. In the 25 Year SaskatchewanWater Security Plan, efficient use of water is identified as the No. 1 action area to relieve the increasedpressures on water supplies. While agriculture consumes the largest amount of freshwater, the averageagriculture irrigation water efficiency is low (estimated to be around 50% to 60%) due to the open-loop natureof the current irrigation strategy.In the current agricultural irrigation practice, the amount of water to be irrigated and the time to apply theirrigation are essentially determined in advance by the irrigator (the farmer) based on the irrigator's knowledgeand various collected auxiliary field data (e.g., weather information, evapotranspiration (ET) rate, randomlysampled soil moisture) in an open-loop fashion. However, it is well recognized in process control thatopen-loop control is quite imprecise. Namely, open-loop irrigation generally leads to either over-irrigation orunder-irrigation, which implies low water-use efficiency. The goal of this project is to close the irrigationdecision-making process to develop a closed-loop precision irrigation solution to significantly improve thewater-use efficiency in agriculture. This project has a great societal impact and will contribute to watersustainability, national and global food security, and greenhouse gases emission reduction.

水对于我们的日常生活至关重要。过去十年来，确保水和粮食安全的挑战一直被世界经济论坛视为最重大的全球风险之一。人口增长是造成全球供水危机的首要因素。淡水的最大用途是农业，约占淡水总消耗量的70%。在加拿大，艾伯塔省、不列颠哥伦比亚省和萨斯喀彻温省是灌溉用水的前三位。根据阿尔伯塔省政府的一份报告，分配给阿尔伯塔省灌溉用水已经受到限制。灌溉面积的任何进一步增加都需要主要来自水效率的提高。在《萨斯喀彻温省 25 年水安全计划》中，有效利用水被确定为缓解日益增加的供水压力的首要行动领域。虽然农业消耗的淡水量最大，但由于当前灌溉策略的开环性质，平均农业灌溉用水效率较低（估计在50%至60%左右）。在当前的农业灌溉实践中，灌溉水量和灌溉时间基本上是由灌溉者（农民）根据灌溉者的知识和收集到的各种信息预先确定的。 以开环方式获取辅助现场数据（例如天气信息、蒸散量 (ET) 率、随机采样的土壤湿度）。然而，在过程控制中众所周知，开环控制相当不精确。也就是说，开环灌溉通常会导致过度灌溉或灌溉不足，这意味着水资源利用效率低。该项目的目标是封闭灌溉决策过程，开发闭环精准灌溉解决方案，显着提高农业用水效率。该项目具有巨大的社会影响，将为水的可持续性、国家和全球粮食安全以及温室气体减排做出贡献。