Agricultural Field Water Management Model and Control Technique for Shangyun Region（3）

The statistics of water use in Taiwan shows the agricultural water accounts for about 70 percent of total waterconsumption all over the country. General public often raises the challenge on the adequacy of this greatproportion of water usage quantity and questions the needs for saving water on agricultural, especially duringthe drought years. Quite often the case when a severe drought happens, agricultural water is often the firstsector to be sacrificed to make room for the supplying water for other sectors, such as municipal water supplyand industrial water demand. Part of the justification on this decision if based on to the fate that irrigationwater has a high degree of merit to endure water shortage. However, the stratagem on water saving shouldnot be based on capacity of endurances but should be from the perspective of the overall value generated bywater supply. The monetary term of the production in the industrial sector or the welfare of residentsconsuming water cannot be used to compare the value of agricultural water usage, for the lack of same unit incomparison. The value of supplying water for agriculture is not only to produce food, but also to maintain thequality of ecological environment. Therefore, to improve the accuracy of the estimation of agricultural water requirement and to deployment capability on the continuous improvement of agriculture irrigation efficiencybecome a crucial issue and is studied in this project. The goal is to strengthen irrigation management to savethe agricultural water in draught periods, so that excess water can play a greater efficacy in the industrial andcommercial development. To enhance the efficiency of irrigation water, the government of Taiwan is activelypromoting the project, named “Chang Yun regional gold corridor project”. Council of Agriculture fundsIrrigation Association to improve water pipeline systems to effectively save water. However, for paddyirrigation which accounts for the largest part of water usage, there is still a considerable opportunities to savewater. Therefore, this study is focused on the establishment of a experimental field for the test of a precisionirrigation model. Through the identifying of the water requirement of the demand side, the management ofthe irrigation water on field can be regulated in a way that the production and ecological benefits are allconsidered at the same time. Such information provides basic need to strengthen irrigation managementmeasures, and to enhance the efficiency of irrigation water in the agricultural sector.