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

1104062该项目支持由加州大学戴维斯分校的Richard Snyder博士、埃及开罗农业研究所的Hassan E-Banna Osman博士和埃及开罗ICARDA的Atef Swell am博士开展的合作研究项目。他们计划致力于开发新的方法来测量埃及的实际蒸散(ETC)。这将有助于埃及的水政策规划者。该项目的目标是(1)改进和使用SIMETAW模型进行埃及的水资源需求规划；(2)使用校准的地表更新方法(SR)开发和更新埃及按地区划分的各种作物的作物系数(KC)值。此外，该项目旨在开发培训材料，将该方法推广到水资源工程师、农艺师、推广人员和种植者。加利福尼亚州正在使用SIMETAW应用程序和地表更新来估计灌溉用水的需求，以改善农业水资源管理。它有可能极大地提高我们对埃及农作物用水需求的了解，并将帮助农民提高农田灌溉效率。还需要关于水需求的信息，以便有效地管理尼罗河三角洲和埃及其他地区的水供应和输送。该提议是开发和收集将SIMETAW模型应用于埃及所有农业生态区所需的信息，并运行该模型，测试其准确性，并根据需要修改程序，为埃及灌溉工程师提供不同条件下更好的用水统计数据。此外，该项目还将确定哪些地方需要更多的参考蒸散量站，以改进埃及上空蒸散量的空间估计。私人投资促进机构将共同工作，安装和操作地面更新站，以测量作物蒸散量和确定作物系数。这将有助于种植者提高他们的农田灌溉效率，也将帮助埃及的水管理专家和水文学家更好地管理通过埃及灌溉网络的水流。这一努力将对经济和环境都有利。该项目的第一年将主要用于培训、安装SR站和收集基本数据。在第二年和第三年，合作者将从SR站点收集数据，以确定各种重要作物的ETC和KC值。第三年将侧重于教育材料、出版和传播项目成果。智力优势：拟议的活动包括在埃及应用水需求模型，并在埃及制定各种作物类型的作物系数。这项研究使用地表更新方法来估计埃及的蒸散量。多年来，已经开发了用于确定和管理各种农田的水平衡的软件，主要使用加利福尼亚州的地点进行测试和校准。需要应用到其他气候和农田情况来测试和校准该软件。这将由埃及的工作提供。将通过讲习班和材料进行技术转让。更广泛的影响：总体而言，水是一种关键资源，其管理影响到人类生活的方方面面。农业是最大的用水量，因此更好的管理会带来实质性的回报。这项工作将有助于实现这一目标，在一个水可能也是各国之间有争议的问题的地区(中东)，这项工作非常重要。这项研究将帮助埃及的科学家设计更好的方法来估计蒸散量，并获得更好的地表能量收支估计，从而帮助更好地管理水资源。这项研究可以提供干旱地区交换系数的信息。这一建议得到了美国-埃及联合基金计划的支持，其中美国国家科学基金会支持美方，埃及政府资助埃及方。

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.