Water use in Wisconsin Potatoes and Pine

In 2018, with support from the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association Water Task Force, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources , and the UW Center for Climatic Research, our lab installed eddy covariance flux towers on a Heartland Farms center-pivot irrigated potato field (US-CS1) from June 2018-May 2019, the Tri-County School Forest pine stand Sept 2018-, a 2nd potato field (US-CS3) from June 2019-June 2020, and a 3rd potato field (US-CS4) from June 2020-. These are all located in Waushara County in the Central Sands of Wisconsin near the UW-Madison Hancock Agricultural Research Station, Hancock, WI. Our research goal is quantification of the net water budget of different land covers of this globally important agricultural region to better constrain groundwater depletion, improve irrigation management, and understand plant water use under changing climates. Links to graphs, tables, and publications are below.

General interest publications

• October 2018 Badger Common’Tater article on “Flux towers measure plant and pine water use” (Page 20)

• May 2019 Badger Common’Tater article on “Ways to measure evapotranspiration” (Page 24)

Data quicklooks:

• Previous 10 days realtime daily ET and climate

• Graph (updated quarterly)

• Daily values table

• Real-time (password protected: username: guest, password: grafana_password )

Ameriflux site descriptions and data link (forthcoming):

• US-CS1 potato field 1 (June 2018-May 2019)

• US-CS2 Tri-County pine forest (Oct 2018-)

• US-CS3 potato field 2 (June 2019-June 2020)

• US-CS4 potato field 3 (June 2020-)

Raw data link:

• potato (CS1/CS3/CS4)

• pine (CS2)

Models

• AgET gridded ET (WISP UW-Madison)

• Sipnet model 14-day forecast (Katie Zarada, PEcAn project, Boston U)

Presentations and Scientific Publications

• January 2018 WPVGA and UW-Extension Grower’s Conference, “Water from Ground to Sky”

• January 2018, Observing Wisconsin Central Sands water budget components under high groundwater demand and a changing climate
  Ammara Talib, UW CCR CPEP Seminar, Madison, WI USA

• Talib, A., A.R. Desai, 2018: Groundwater-Surface Water Interaction in Agricultural Watershed that Encompasses Dense Network of High Capacity Wells, presented at 42nd Annual Meeting of American Water Resources Association (AWRA), Appleton, WI, 8-9 Mar 2018.

• May 2018, Observing Wisconsin Central Sands water budget components under high groundwater demand and a changing climate
  Ammara Talib, UW CEE Graduate seminar, Madison, WI USA

• November 2018 WPVGA Water Task Force update

• Talib, A., A.R. Desai, 2018: Efficacy of Machine Learning Algorithms for Identifying Hotspots of Groundwater Depletion in Intensively Irrigated Agricultural Regions, abstract H21J -1787 presented at 2018 AGU Fall Meeting, Washington, D.C., 10-14 Dec.

• Nocco, M.A., E.O. McNamee , B. Bohman, A. Talib, C.J. Rosen, A.R. Desai, C.C. Kern, C.J Kucharik, T.E Twine, 2018: Pine to Potato Conversion Impacts to Groundwater Recharge in the Northern Great Lakes Region, abstract H11J -1598 presented at 2018 AGU Fall Meeting, Washington, D.C., 10-14 Dec.

• February 2019 WPVGA and UW-Extension Grower’s Conference, “Improving forecasts of crop water demand with direct ET measurements over irrigated fields”

• May 2019 WPVGA Water Task Force update

• August 2019 WPVGA Water Task Force update

• September 2019, Talib, A.: Field-scale mapping and forecasting of water budgets in intensively irrigated agricultural regions through an advanced ensemble modeling framework, Ameriflux Community Meeting, Boulder, CO

• November 2019,WPVGA Water Task Force Update

• December 2019: Talib, A Field-scale mapping and forecasting of water budgets in intensively irrigated agricultural regions through an advanced ensemble modeling framework,  H31L-1886, American Geophysical Union Fall 2019, San Francisco, CO

• February 2020: What have we learned from continuous crop and forest evapotranspiration observations in the Central Sands?, WPVGA 2020 Grower Education Conference, Stevens Point, WI, 4-6 Feb.

• July 2020, WPVGA Water Task Force Update

• Dec 2020, WPVGA Water Task Force Update

Contacts

• Ankur Desai, Principal Investigator

• Ammara Talib, Ph.D. student, data analysis

• Jonathan Thom, Researcher, eddy covariance systems

• Support partners: Tamas Houlihan (WPVGA), Jeremie Pavelski (Heartland Farms), Bob Smail (WI DNR)

• Research partners: Mallika Nocco (UC-Davis), Jingyi Huang (UW-Madison), Yi Sunny Wang (UW-Madison), Steve Loheide (UW-Madison), Dom Ciruzzi (UW-Madison), Phil Townsend (UW-Madison HySpex), Paul Stoy (ALEXI), Jason Otkin (ALEXI), Martha Anderson (ALEXI), John Panuska (WISP)