AgSAT: A Smart Irrigation Application for Field-Scale Daily Crop ET and Water Requirements Using Satellite Imagery

Abstract

With the foreseen increase in population and the reliance on water as a key input for agricultural production, greater demand will be placed on freshwater supplies. The objective of this work was to present the newly developed Android smartphone application to calculate crop evapotranspiration in real-time to support field-scale irrigation management. As part of the answer to water shortage, we embraced technology by developing AgSAT, a Google Earth Engine-based application that optimizes water use for food production. AgSAT uses meteorological data to calculate daily water requirements using the ASCE-Penman–Monteith method (ETref) and vegetation indices from satellite imagery to derive the basal crop growth coefficient, Kcb. The performance of AgSAT to estimate ETref was assessed using climatic data from 18 meteorological stations distributed over several climatic zones worldwide. ETref estimation through the app showed acceptable results with values of 1.27, 0.9, 0.79, 0.95, and 0.5 for root mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (r), modeling efficiency (NSE), concordance index (d), and percentage bias (Pbias), respectively. AgSAT guides gross irrigation requirements for crops and rationalizes water quantities used in agricultural production. AgSAT has been released, is currently in use by research scientists, agricultural producers, and irrigation managers, and is freely accessible from the Google Play and IOS Store and also at agsat.app. Our work is geared towards the development of remote sensing-based technologies that transfer significant benefits to farmers and water-saving efforts.