The course focuses on lectures and computer-based labs to provide students with fundamental concepts on soil hydrology, the use of online resources and several free softwares to compute crop water requirement, crop productivity, irrigation schedules and performance evaluation.
Online resources (free downloadable softwares and web sites);
Softwares’ manuals;
Provided papers and documentation;
Lecture slides.
Learning Objectives
The course aims to provide the students with key concepts and practical tools for the use of the free softwares and online resources developed to aid irrigation management.
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge on irrigation and plant biology.
Teaching Methods
Lectures and computer exercises.
Further information
Students are strongly encouraged to attend classes.
Having a personal laptop (with administrative rights) is recommended. Alternatively, the computers of the computer room can be used.
Pre-installed required softwares:
text writer (eg, MS Word or corresponding open-source options);
calculation spreadsheet (eg, MS Excel or corresponding open-source options);
text editor (suggested: Notepad ++, freely available).
Type of Assessment
Computer-based exam and written exam. The combined exam methodology allows assessing that the student has acquired the expected knowledge on the course topics, and can analyse and synthesize the different topics in the framework of a practical situation by using the softwares that are presented and explained during the course.
The written part of the exam is based on three-four open questions on the topics explained during the first part of the course (theory part). The practical exam is based on an exercise, organized in different sections, that focuses on the practical application of one of the softwares presented and broadly used during the classes. The finale grade will merge the individual results of the written exam and the software-based exam.
Course program
Fundamental concepts on water in soils and evapotranspiration.
Introduction to CROPWAT 8.0: computation of crop water requirements and development of irrigation schedules.
CLIMWAT 2.0 and New_LocClim: climatic databases.
Harmonized World Soil Database: soil properties database.
Soil Water Characteristics: calculator of soil properties based on texture information.
Introduction to AQUACROP 6.1: computation of productivity response to water of herbaceous crops.
ETO calculator and DailyET: calculation of reference evapotranspiration.