Managing Global Resources for a Secure Future

We have been working on a tool that calculates site specific water balance at all of the Oklahoma Mesonet stations across the state, using the FAO56 Penman-Monteith Evapotranspiration equation paired with the SCS CN method for estimating infiltration. These equations are satisfied using daily data provided by the Oklahoma Mesonet and soil data from the SSURGO soils database. We have high hopes that the crop model we have created can be used to provide insight to farmers across the state of Oklahoma who are rain-fed producers. The tool will eventually allow farmers to estimate the current soil water balance or status, and see the level at which the soil moisture has reached in their field for various crop and soil types through a graphical user interface within an app that was created using statistical programs R Studio and R Shiny. Feedback from various poster presentations concerning the uncertainty that lies within the SCS CN estimations of soil water infiltration into the soil has led to a further study on infiltration models that could better represent the soil-water interactions of the crop model. Currently, we are working on a comparison between the results of the SCS CN method and the Green-Ampt method for layered soils to determine whether uncertainty lies within the infiltration models being used, or the datasets that are providing the data for this analysis. Future goals for this project is to give the ability for farmers that have land located between Mesonet stations to be able to calculate estimated values of soil water available to plants, but for now they can only be calculated at each individual weather station. The tool will be available to any producer, it may provide the most insight to rainfed producers who have been considering upgrading their field with irrigation techniques to improve productivity.