Water-Efficient Irrigation Technologies:

Florida, North Carolina, and Oklahoma extension programs

Water Conservation: half-empty or half-full?

Regional Webinar Series

Simple Irrigation Measurement

Justin Quetone Moss, Asst. Professor

Dept. of Horticulture & Landscape Architecture

John Haase, Horticulturist, Rogers County

OSU Cooperative Extension Service

Statement of Critical Problem

• Water conservation

• Urban and suburban sprawl

• Landscape and turfgrass water irrigation

Statement of Critical Problem

• Urban and suburban sprawl

– 50% or more population growth in several Southern Region cities during last 20 years: ex. Broken Arrow, OK 52.2% increase from 1990 census

• Increase in consumer water use

• Competing water demands

• Environmental aspects

Goal

• The goal of this project is to understand and promote more conservation oriented landscape water use in Oklahoma.

Objectives

1. Assess current landscape water use and irrigation practices in Oklahoma urban and suburban areas through conjoint choice surveys.

Objectives

• Survey homeowners, builders, and lawn care companies about perceptions and preferences concerning landscape/turfgrass aesthetics and accompanying irrigation practices

• How do they make landscape irrigation decisions?

• What are the economic factors associated with those decisions – aesthetics, costs of water, willingness to pay?

Objectives

2. Determine the accuracy and reliability of reference evapotranspiration (ET) data with established crop coefficients compared to actual landscape plant water use in Oklahoma.

Final Objective and Topic for Today

3. Educate Oklahoma stakeholders and citizens of landscape irrigation practices to conserve Oklahoma water resources.

• Hands-on irrigation training and demonstration workshops conducted through the OSU Cooperative Extension Service.

• Fact sheets and interactive Oklahoma landscape irrigation website.

Oklahoma Simple Irrigation Plan Website – how “much” to water

http://sip.mesonet.org/

Approach

• Conducted three training workshops with Master Gardeners in Oklahoma in 2010

– Tulsa

– Oklahoma City

– Claremore

Approach

• Objective was to train Master Gardeners to conduct simple irrigation measurements to measure the output of their irrigation system

• Uniformity?

Approach

• Pre-workshop survey, Post-workshop survey

• Irrigation measurement results

Approach

Results

• Master Gardeners reported increase in knowledge of lawn irrigation output

• Reported increase in knowledge of how to conduct a “simple irrigation audit”

• Reported increased perception that “simple irrigation audits” can help homeowners to conserve water on individual and collective basis

Benefits

• Most effort in our state has focused on increasing knowledge of how much to water lawn

• Little effort on increasing knowledge of irrigation output and uniformity on individual basis

• Homeowners can learn how much water their lawn sprinklers deliver in inches per hour

Benefits

• Widely reported that up to 50% or more of municipal water used for outdoor use during July and August.

• Based on historical peak water use data for Tulsa and Oklahoma City (~715 million liters per day during July 1999), a 10% reduction in landscape irrigation water use would have resulted in a savings of ~36 million liters of treated, municipal water per day

Costs

• We were able to conduct the workshops with minimal costs

– Used OSU Cooperative Extension offices in each city

– 4 hour workshops – no lunch, light snacks

– Biggest costs is for the collection cups, we used the “professional” collection cups from Underhill Irrigaton

Challenges

• Expanding beyond Master Gardeners

• Statewide/regional efforts

• Cost of collection cups

– Some states/Cooperative Extension Services market an irrigation audit kit for $10-$20 each

Acknowledgements

• Oklahoma Water Resources Research Institute

• Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service

• Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station

• Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture