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The WATERIGHT site was developed by the Center for Irrigation Technology at California State University, Fresno with significant support from the US Bureau of Reclamation. WATERIGHT is designed to be a multi-function, educational resource for irrigation water management. The site is designed for three audiences: homeowners, commercial turf growers, and agriculture.
An important resource of the site is the irrigation scheduling programming that helps users develop site-specific, seasonal irrigation schedules. WATERIGHT is connected to the California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS) and the AgriMet system in the Northwest states of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. These weather stations provide the scheduling routines with reference evapotranspiration data for specific areas. Separate sections are available for scheduling home, commercial turf, and production agriculture.
IMPORTANT!! The irrigation schedules produced by WATERIGHT are only estimates of plant / water requirements. They are based on long term, average weather patterns and average crop coefficient curves. Field verification by the user is absolutely necessary to ensure proper soil moisture levels and plant health throughout a growing season. In order to help the user understand the procedures used in the three WATERIGHT scheduling programs, we recommend viewing the Scheduling Program Tutorials before using the Irrigation Scheduling section.
WATERIGHT contains a series of Advisories and Tutorials covering various topics including Energy Use for Irrigation, Non-Point Source Pollution, Water Budget and Graphical/Sensor-based Irrigation Scheduling, Planning Furrow, Sprinkler, or Micro Irrigations, and the difference between Irrigation Efficiency and Distribution Uniformity. There is also a page with short answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
The Center for Irrigation Technology has also produced many publications concerning water management. Many of these are available for viewing and downloading (in Adobe Acrobat .PDF format) on the Publications page.
