SIMETAW# - a Model for Agricultural Water Demand Planning

A successful water management scheme for irrigated crops requires an integrated approach, which accounts for water, soil, and crop management. SIMETAW# is a user friendly soil water balance model that assesses crop water use, irrigation requirements, and generates hypothetical irrigation schedules for a wide range of crops experiencing full or deficit irrigation. SIMETAW# calculates reference evapotranspiration (ETo), and it computes potential crop evapotranspiration (ETc), and the evapotranspiration of applied water (ETaw), which is the amount of irrigation water needed to match losses from the effective soil root zone due to ETc that are not replaced by precipitation and other sources. Using input information on crop and soil characteristics and the distribution uniformity of infiltrated irrigation applications in full or deficit conditions, the model estimates the mean depth of infiltrated water (IW) into each quarter of the field. The impact of deficit irrigation on the actual crop evapotranspiration (ETa) is computed separately for each of the four quarters of the cropped field. SIMETAW# simulation adjusts ETo estimates for projected future CO2 concentration, and hence the model can assess climate change impacts on future irrigation demand allowing the user to propose adaptation strategies that potentially lead to a more sustainable water use. This paper discusses the SIMETAW# model and evaluates its performance on estimating ETc, ETa, and ETaw for three case studies.