Irrigation fact sheets

These fact sheets contain information that can help irrigators improve water-use efficiency.

• Cotton
• Dairy
• Drainage
• Farm dams
• Groundwater
• Horticulture
• Irrigation application systems
• Irrigation maintenance issues
• Irrigation management factors
• Irrigation monitoring equipment
• Irrigation scheduling
• Lucerne/pasture
• Salinity
• Soils
• Water metering
• Water quality
• Water recycling
• Weather and climate

Cotton

• WATERpak: a guide for irrigation management in cotton. This guide has separate factsheets on:
  • Cost of pumping
  • Pump efficiency
  • Soil water monitoring
  • Irrigation scheduling
  • Irrigation water quality
  • Evaluating surface irrigation systems.

Dairy

• Dairy effluent management systems
• Dairybal - a whole of farm nutrient and water mass balance spreadsheet

Drainage

• Deep drainage: a problem or an asset? (PDF, 149K)*

Farm dams

• Building a farm dam
• Excavated tanks and ring tanks (PDF, 181K)*
• Farm dam construction (PDF, 160K)*
• Gully dams: estimating earthworks and storage volume (PDF, 178K)*
• Leaking farm dams

Groundwater

• Disinfection of water bores (PDF, 117K)*
• Drilling for water (PDF, 115K)*
• Iron bacteria in water bores (PDF, 96K)*
• Using chemicals in water bores (PDF, 115K)*
• Water bores: testing yield (PDF, 130K)*
• Water bores: troubleshooting (PDF, 115K)*

Horticulture

• Queensland crop water use efficiency benchmarks - Water for Profit factsheets
• Bananas - better drainage
• Bananas – methods of irrigation
• Producing vegetables for a market 4. sensible use of irrigation resources
• Understanding the annual growth cycle of citrus (PDF)*
• Water for Profit: what's it all about? (PDF)*
• Watermelons: commercial production

Irrigation application systems

• Basic design requirements for irrigation systems (PDF)*

Microirrigation

• Catch can trials - drip and micro-sprinkler systems (PDF)*
• Measuring flow in microirrigation (PDF)*
• Subsurface drip irrigation: advantages and limitations (PDF, 281K)*
• Subsurface drip irrigation: crop management (PDF, 279K)*
• Subsurface drip irrigation: installation (PDF, 487K)*
• Subsurface drip irrigation: system components (PDF, 518K)*
• Subsurface drip irrigation: system design (PDF, 292K)*
• Subsurface drip irrigation: system maintenance (PDF, 282K)*

Centre pivots

• Centre pivot catch can trials
• Centre pivot irrigation - application efficiency (PDF, 44K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - distribution uniformity (PDF, 39K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - effluent use (PDF, 37K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - managing wheel tracks (PDF, 42K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - moving towable pivots (PDF, 63K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - pressure regulators (PDF, 43K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - sprinkler packages (PDF, 33K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - system capacity (PDF, 29K)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - water quality (PDF, 35K)*

Sprinkler irrigation

• Lateral moves and low pressure booms - catch can trials
• Measuring the performance of overhead irrigators (PDF, 173K)*
• Solid set and handshift sprinklers - catch can trials
• Effect of rotation angle on travelling gun performance (PDF)*

Surface irrigation

• Measuring the performance of furrow irrigations (PDF, 207K)*

 

Irrigation maintenance issues

• Cavitation in centrifugal pumps (PDF, 90K)*
• Acid treatments for micro-irrigation systems (PDF)*
• Chlorination of micro-irrigation systems (PDF)*
• Flushing of micro-irrigation systems (PDF)*
• Effect of water quality on micro-irrigation maintenance
• Filtration options for micro-irrigation systems (PDF)*
• Micro-sprinkler system checks
• Pump efficiency: factors and costs (PDF)*
• Pump troubleshooting: centrifugal pumps (PDF, 161K)*
• Pump troubleshooting: river pumps and bore pumps (PDF, 112K)*
• Pumping from shallow streams (PDF, 143K)*
• Reading engine performance curves (PDF)*
• Selecting an irrigation pump
• Worn parts help you part with your money

Irrigation management factors

• Benchmarking water use (PDF)*
• Calculating distribution uniformity (DU) (PDF)*
• Options for managing with limited water
• Shallow observation wells: for better irrigation management (PDF, 113K)*

Fertigation

• Centre pivot irrigation - fertigation & chemigation (PDF, 29K)*
• Fertigation management
• Centre pivot irrigation - fertigation (PDF, 28K)*
• Fertigation compatibility table (PDF)*
• Measuring fertigation system performance
• Methods of fertigation

Irrigation monitoring equipment

• Choosing a soil-water monitoring tool (PDF)*
• Positioning of soil-water monitoring tools (PDF)*
• Soil moisture monitoring device - tube installation (PDF)*
• Soil moisture monitoring tools (PDF, 183K)*
• Taking gopher probe readings (PDF)*
• Using conductivity meters in agriculture

Tensiometer

• Installation and placement of tensiometers (PDF, 128K)*
• Maintenance and troubleshooting of tensiometers (PDF, 110K)*
• Installing tensiometers (PDF)*
• Tensiometers in irrigation (PDF)*
• What is a tensiometer? (PDF, 142K)*

Irrigation scheduling

• Common irrigation unit conversions
• Converting readily available water to hours of irrigation: drip systems (PDF)*
• Estimating crop water use based on evaporation measurements (PDF)*
• Estimating how much water should be applied (PDF)*
• Centre pivot irrigation - scheduling (PDF, 32K)*
• Handshift and solid set sprinkler irrigation systems - calculating when to irrigate (PDF)*
• The HOWWET? computer program: estimating soil moisture and nitrogen (PDF, 152K)*
• The HOWOFTEN? computer program: exploring probabilities from daily rainfall records (PDF, 171K)*
• Irrigation scheduling using evaporation data and crop factors (PDF, 136K)*
• Irrigation scheduling with minipans (PDF, 224K)*
• Irrigation: water balance scheduling
• Travelling boom irrigation systems - calculating when to irrigate (PDF)*
• Tree/vine micro-irrigation systems with overlap of water from emitters along the row (PDF)*
• Tree/vine micro-irrigation systems without overlap of water from emitters along the row (PDF)*
• Weather and climate forecasting (PDF, 161K)*
• Weather stations (PDF)*
• What is scheduling? (PDF, 136K)*

Lucerne/pasture

• Irrigated pastures for inland Central Queensland

Salinity

• Brymaroo catchment - a salinity case study (PDF, 174K)*
• Ensuring an acceptable level of salts in the crop root zone
• Estimating the level of salt in the crop root zone (PDF)*
• Irrigation water quality: salinity & soil structure stability (PDF, 202K)*
• Production from salty lands (PDF, 176K)*
• Salinity hazard mapping in Qld (PDF, 186K)*
• Salinity in Queensland (PDF, 220K)*
• Salts in the crop root zone
• Using conductivity meters in agriculture

Soils

Infiltration

• How much water is in my soil?
• How much water can my soils hold? (PDF, 172K)*
• Soil compaction in cropping land (PDF, 128K)*

Soil structure

• Cropping soils of Central Queensland
• Managing irrigation sodicity (PDF)*
• Paddock guide to determining soil texture (PDF, 113K)*
• Soil acidification (PDF, 139K)*
• Soil colour (PDF, 128K)*
• Soil components: the building blocks (PDF)*
• Soil management (PDF, 124K)*
• Soil pH (PDF)*
• Soil texture (PDF)*
• Soil water and texture (PDF)*
• Measuring and adjusting soil pH
• Understanding soils (PDF, 212K)*

Water metering

• Water metering (PDF, 78K)*

Water quality

• Blue-green algae (PDF, 127K)*
• Interpreting water analysis for crop and pasture
• Managing blue-green algae blooms in farm dams (PDF, 148K)*
• Sampling your water supply (PDF, file unavailable)*
• Solving the scale problem in pipes (PDF, 113K)*

Water recycling

• Water recycling

Weather and climate

• The hydrologic cycle (PDF, 273K)*
• Water and the Land (Bureau of Meteorology)
• Climate information (Bureau of Meteorology)

If you have any problems accessing these pdfs please contact RWUE Initiative.

* Requires Adobe Reader

Last updated 15 November 2010

Rural water use efficiency

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