An Assessment of Water Budget of Ibadan, Nigeria

The influence of climatic conditions of precipitation and evapotranspiration exercise great control on soil water budget. This is fundamental to crop production and hydrological processes. This study assessed the temporal variability of soil moisture condition of Ibadan, Nigeria using the water budget approach. Specifically the study analyzed the climatic variables of monthly rainfall and means monthly air temperature, computed the mean monthly evapotranspiration values, plots the water budget graph, and discussed the implications of the observed seasonal trend in water budget condition on agricultural activities and hydrological processes. Monthly rainfall and mean monthly air temperature data used were collected from the archives of the Nigeria meteorological agency for the period 2008-2020. Monthly potential evapotranspiration data used in the study was estimated from the mean monthly air temperature data. The monthly rainfall data and the monthly evapotranspiration data were used to plot the water budget graph. Results revealed temporal variability in soil moisture condition. Water deficit condition was observed between November and April while water surplus condition was observed between May and October. The highest water surplus condition was observed in September (111.9mm) while the highest deficit condition (-125.64mm) was observed in December. The month of October recorded the lowest water surplus condition (41.30mm) while the month of April recorded the lowest water deficit condition (-10.10mm). The implications of the observed seasonal variation in soil moisture status on agricultural activities and hydrological processes were discussed.

Study on the Uncertainty of Critical Rainfall for Flash Floods in Small Watersheds Based on the Random Rainfall Pattern

Flash floods cause great harm to people's lives and property safety. Rainfall is the key factor which induces flash floods, and critical rainfall (CR) is the most widely used indicator in flash flood early warning systems. Due to the randomness of rainfall, the CR has great uncertainty, which causes missed alarms when predicting flash floods. To improve the early warning accuracy for flash floods, a random rainfall pattern (RRP) generation method based on control parameters, including the comprehensive peak position coefficient (CPPC) and comprehensive peak ratio (CPR), is proposed and an early warning model with dynamic correction based on RRP identification is established. The rainfall-runoff process is simulated by the HEC-HMS hydrological model, and the CR threshold space corresponding to the RRP set is calculated based on the trial algorithm. Xinxian, a small watershed located in Henan Province, China, is taken as the case study. The results show that the method for generating the RRP is practical and simple, and it effectively reflects the CR uncertainty caused by the rainfall pattern uncertainty. The HEC-HMS model is proved to have good application performance in the Xinxian watershed. Through sensitivity analysis, the effect of the antecedent soil moisture condition, CPPC, and CPR are compared. The proposed early warning model is practical and effective, which increases the forecast lead time.

Estimating growing-season root zone soil moisture from vegetation index-based evapotranspiration fraction and soil properties in the Northwest Mountain region, USA

A soil moisture retrieval method is proposed, in the absence of ground-based auxiliary measurements, by deriving the soil moisture content relationship from the satellite vegetation index-based evapotranspiration fraction and soil moisture physical properties of a soil type. A temperature–vegetation dryness index threshold value is also proposed to identify water bodies and underlying saturated areas. Verification of the retrieved growing season soil moisture was performed by comparative analysis of soil moisture obtained by observed conventional in situ point measurements at the 239-km2 Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed, Idaho, USA (2006–2009), and at the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) soil moisture measurement sites in Sundance, Wyoming (2012–2015), and Lewistown, Montana (2014–2015). The proposed method best represented the effective root zone soil moisture condition, at a depth between 50 and 100 cm, with an overall average R2 value of 0.72 and average root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.042.

Growth Performance of Malaysian Parthenium hysterophorus under Various Environmental Variables

Parthenium weed is an invasive weed species of economic importance worldwide. Native to the American tropics, the infestation ability of Parthenium weed to a new habitat is largely influenced by environmental factors. Despite Parthenium weed invasion in Malaysia dated back to 2013, investigation on its ecological behavior is still lacking. Hence, extensive studies on the ecological behavior of two predominant Malaysian Parthenium weed populations were executed. In the Petri dish seed bioassay, germination of Parthenium weed seeds was evident at temperatures up to 80 °C. Parthenium weed was also germinable in saline condition of up to 250 mM, osmotic pressure ranging from −1.2 to 0 MPa, and a wide range of pH (4–9), thus these abiotic conditions are by no means the limiting factors for the Parthenium weed. The pot trial observed that this invasive weed grew readily in various Malaysian soil textures. Parthenium weed successfully emerged from 0 cm to not beyond 2 cm soil burial and retained its emergence capacity under different submergence periods in water. The most favorable soil moisture condition for Parthenium weed emergence was saturated (0 kPa), followed by field capacity (−30–−50 kPa), while no emergence occurred in drought (−70 kPa) as well as flooded soils. These indicate that both Parthenium weed populations possess high tolerance to various abiotic conditions in Malaysia. Results obtained in the current study have crucially become guidelines for the local government authorities in predicting wide spread of Parthenium weed in diverse ecological zones, to further manage this pernicious weed efficiently.

Dominant Plant Functional Group Determine the Response of the Temporal Stability of Plant Community Biomass to 9-Year Warming on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau

Ecosystem stability characterizes ecosystem responses to natural and anthropogenic disturbance and affects the feedback between ecosystem and climate. A 9-year warming experiment (2010–2018) was conducted to examine how climatic warming and its interaction with the soil moisture condition impact the temporal stability of plant community aboveground biomass (AGB) of an alpine meadow in the central Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). Under a warming environment, the AGB percentage of grasses and forbs significantly increased but that of sedges decreased regardless of the soil water availability in the experimental plots. The warming effects on plant AGB varied with annual precipitation. In the dry condition, the AGB showed no significant change under warming in the normal and relatively wet years, but it significantly decreased in relatively drought years (16% in 2013 and 12% in 2015). In the wet condition, the AGB showed no significant change under warming in the normal and relatively drought years, while it significantly increased in relatively wet years (12% in 2018). Warming significantly decreased the temporal stability of AGB of plant community and sedges. Species richness remained stable even under the warming treatment in both the dry and wet conditions. The temporal stability of AGB of sedges (dominant plant functional group) explained 66.69% variance of the temporal stability of plant community AGB. Our findings highlight that the temporal stability of plant community AGB is largely regulated by the dominant plant functional group of alpine meadow that has a relatively low species diversity.

Ammonium-Based Compound Fertilisers Mitigate Nitrous Oxide Emissions in Temperate Grassland

Nitrogen fertiliser application represents the largest anthropogenic source of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, and the magnitude of these emissions is dependent on the type of fertilisers applied in the agroecosystems. Despite N-P-K compound fertilisers being commonly used in agricultural soils, a lack of information exists regarding their effects on N2O emissions. This study aims at examining the effects of different commonly used N-P-K compound fertiliser formulations with contrasting nitrate to ammonium ratios (0.05 to 0.88) on N2O emissions, yield, and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in temperate grassland and to compare these variables with common straight N fertilisers. Compound fertilisers with varying NPK inclusion rates (18-6-12, 10-10-20, 24-2.2-4.5, and 27-2.5-5), and calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) and urea + N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide (NBPT) were applied at 80 kg N ha−1 to experimental plots in managed grassland on two occasions in a growing season. Fluxes of N2O during the experiment period, yield and NUE following two harvests were measured. The cumulative N2O emission from urea + NBPT, 18-6-12, 10-10-20, and 24-2.2-4.5 treatments were significantly reduced by 44%, 43%, 37%, and 31% compared with CAN treatment under conducive soil moisture condition. Under the same soil condition, 18-6-12 and 10-10-20 treatments showed higher yield, N uptake, and NUE although did not significantly differ from the other fertiliser treatments. Our results suggest that ammonium-based compound fertilisers have a potential to reduce N2O emissions while maintaining yields. Further long-term study is needed to capture the full magnitude of variations in N2O emissions, including ammonia (NH3) volatilization from nitrate and ammonium-based compound fertiliser applications from multiple soil types and under different climatic conditions.

Event Based Post-Fire Hydrological Modeling of the Upper Arroyo Seco Watershed in Southern California

Understanding, development and integration of pre-fire and post-fire watershed hydrological processes into a watershed hydrological model in a wild-fire repeating region similar to parts of California is critical for emergency assessments. 95% of the upper Arroyo Seco watershed located in Los Angeles County in southern California was burned by the Station fire that occurred in August 2009, significantly increasing the watershed observed runoff. This watershed was employed to develop the January 2008 rainfall runoff model as a pre-fire event-based watershed hydrological model. This pre-fire watershed model was subsequently employed in the rainfall events of 18 January 2010 and 27 February 2010, a few months after the fire event of August 2009. The pre-fire watershed model when employed in the post-fire rainfall events without considering the fire effects vastly underestimated the simulated discharge. For this reason, in this study of the post-fire catchment runoff modeling the following points are taken into consideration: (a) a realistic distributed initial soil moisture condition; (b) a formulation that includes a reduction factor and a burn severity factor, as multiplying factors to soil hydraulic conductivity in the soil characteristic curve; and (c) runoff routing parameterization under burned conditions. Developing the post-fire Arroyo Seco watershed model by using the above-mentioned points enhanced the Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency from −24% to 82% for the 18 January 2010 rainfall event and from −47% to 96% for the 27 February 2010 rainfall event.

Spatiotemporal impact of antecedent drought on hot extremes from the nonstationary risk perspective: A case study in eastern China

Hot extremes may adversely impact human health and agricultural production. Owing to anthropogenic and climate changes, the close and dynamic interaction between drought and hot extremes in most areas of China need to be revisited from the perspective of nonstationarity. This study therefore proposes a time-varying Copula-based model to describe the nonstationary dependence structure of extreme temperature (ET) and antecedent soil moisture condition to quantify the dynamic risk of hot extremes conditioned on dry/wet condition. This study proposed a new approach to identify the soil moisture driving law over extreme temperature from the point view of tail monotonicity and nonstationary risk assessment. Owing to the LTI-RTD (left tail increasing and right tail decreasing) tail monotonicity for dependence structure of these two extremes derived from most areas, the driving laws of soil moisture over ET follows DDL1-WDL1 laws (DDL1: drier antecedent soil moisture condition would trigger a higher risk of ET; WDL1: wetter antecedent soil moisture condition would alleviate the occurrence risk of ET). Because of the spatiotemporal divergence of sensitivity index derived from tail monotonicity (SITM), we can conclude that the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of response degree of ET over the variations of antecedent dry/wet conditions is evident. Incorporation of nonstationarity and tail monotonicity helps identify the changes of driving mechanism (laws) between soil moisture and hot extremes. From the comparison of different kinds of nonstationary behaviours over the spatial distribution of conditional probability of ET (CP1), the dependence nonstationarity can impose greater variations on the spatial distribution of conditional risk of ET given antecedent dry condition (CP1).

Solar Powered Smart Irrigation System with GSM for Agriculture

Most of the Indian people are dependent on agriculture and for this reason our country’s economy is mainly dependent on agriculture, so efficient agriculture requires proper irrigation and can improve our country’s economy accordingly. We can achieve this with the help of various electronic devices and through its use we can get proper irrigation in this field in an automated manner. Project Irrigation and Water Level Control using AT89S52 designed to address agricultural sector issues related to irrigation and water monitoring systems with available water resources. Prolonged periods of dry weather conditions due to fluctuations in annual rainfall can significantly reduce agricultural yields. Profiteering companies need an efficient irrigation system as their intolerance to the cost and drought of establishing these crops. On this project we're the usage of AT89s52 (8051 microcontroller), humidity sensor, dc water pump, relay driving force, level sensor, gsm modem, sun panel, battery etc. A sprinkler turns on / off depending on soil moisture condition and condition. The motor can be displayed in text messages via the GSM model on a 16X2 LCD. Also, the water level can be monitored by level sensors. It helps to know the availability of water at the input source