Probe for Windows Help: Scheduling

Probe for Windows calculates how much water should be applied ScheduleAmount, and when ScheduleDate.

MAIN

Soil Water Depletion Rate, or Crop Daily Water Use (CDWU), can be calculated from one of...

  1. Probe
    Rate-of-change of measured soil moisture. CDWU = Probe DWU
  2. Estimated
    Calculated from the site formula when readings are posted, but the user can change the value (eg 3.4 mm/day).
    If the value has been changed, the changed value will be used CDWU = EstimatedDWU
    If the value has not been changed, the site formula will be re-calculated each day CDWU = SiteFormula * CropFactor * SoilFactor
  3. Historical
    Calculated each day using the site formula. CDWU = SiteFormula * CropFactor * SoilFactor
  4. Crop
    Calculated each day using the crop formula. CDWU = CropFormula * CropFactor * SoilFactor
  5. Keydata
    Calculated each day from a keydata row formula. CDWU = KeydataFormula * CropFactor * SoilFactor
  6. Forecast
    ET from a forecast weather service, or other weather data. CDWU = ForecastET * CropFactor * SoilFactor

For the remainder of the season (after the next irrigation), Crop Daily Water Use is calculated from...

Amount changed by user The calculated ScheduleAMT and ScheduleDate are shown (top right), and can be changed by the user.

The value will revert to calculated when a new reading is posted; or double-click the value; or


All options and user-entered values are site-specific, unless marked as global or local - see here

Current State

A summary of current state of the site

Current State

Upper and Lower limits Formulas to calculate the UPPER and LOWER limit values - see details
eg Upper: FULL

Check formulas Enter a formula and a date, and the value.

exports Upper/Lower/ET/Kc values to .csv files.

Gains

Total of all irrigations and rainfalls in the season

Gains

Delivery

Deliver

Continous (Drip) Row, plant, emitter spacing, etc (cm, ins) are used to calculate delivery rates.
Max delivery hours per day - may limit the calculated Schedule Amount.

Non-drip (Cyclic, Cyclic-7days) calculates the delivery rate (Ml/day) from Delivered Volume (Kl, ML, kGal) and Delivery Time (hours).
Position (0-100, default=0) is the position of the monitoring tube relative to the length of the site (0=head ditch, 100=tail ditch). The value is used to adjust the schedule date and start time to account for the time water will take to reach the tail drain.

The Area (Ha, Acre) of the site is used to calculate volumes of water

The Delivery Factor (default = 1) allows for discrepancies between calculated amount and the actual amount required for this site

See (Units

Historical DWU

Historical DWU

Options

Options


Irrigation Method Options

Probe for Windows calculates how much water should be applied (ScheduleAMT) and when (ScheduleDate) using three methods...

Mode options

  1. Cyclic
    • Water should be applied when the Active Root Zone water content (RZ1) falls to Stress.
    • Stress depends on crop type - either Refill (constant) or the Lower Limit (varying during the season)
    • Schedule Date = CurrentDate + (RZ1 - Stress) / CDWU
    • Schedule amount = (Upper - Stress) * Delivery factor
    • Stress and Upper will be calculated at the schedule date
    • The schedule date may be adjusted for pumping rate and monitoring position - see delivery
    • See exanple
  2. Cyclic-Next-7-days
    • The amount of water that needs to be delivered in next 7 days to reach Upper
    • The target RZ1 is the value of UPPER in 7 days.
    • Schedule date is in 7 days.
    • Schedule amount = (UPPER - (CurrentRZ1 - (CDWU * 7) - ForecastRain) * DeliveryFactor
    • The schedule start and end times will allow for pumping rate and monitoring position.
    • See example
  3. Continous
    • The amount of water that needs to be delivered in next 7 days to reach the Target
    • The Target is (normally) the average of UPPER and LOWER.
    • Schedule amount = (Target - Current + CDWU - Rain ) * Delivery Factor
    • The Schedule Amount can be limited by the Maximum Pumping Rate
    • See example

The calculations are done at daily intervals.

The soil depletion rate is Crop Daily Water Use (>CDWU

Forecast rain can be optionally included - see predicted rain

The calculated Schedule Date and Schedule Amount can be changed by the user on tab: Schedule (top right).
The changed values will be re-calculated when a new reading is posted, or use or double-click ???.

Chop-Gains-to-Full If (global), assumes a free-draining soil and any rain that takes RZ1 above FULL is assumed to be wasted, and RZ1 will be set to FULL
This setting is global, but should have been be soil-specific.
Could be implemented using Soil Factor, with a high drainage rate when RZ1 close to FULL (Field Capacity).

Crop Factor A value (default=1) or a formula using a .kc file, used to calculate Crop Daily Water Use

Schedule amounts below 5mm can be set to zero (global)

Crop type


Scheduling Options

Even more options...

Scheduling Options

ProbeDWU - Handle problems if being used to schedule irrigations.(global)

DWU formula in keydata If a keydata DWU formula is being used to schedule, the key data row needs to be selected.

Weather

Soil Facter

Schedule Untill Schedule can be shown up to the end of season (local)

Save Schedule Amount The calculated Schedule Amount can be saved as a key data item, so that the relationship between scheduled, delivered and effective can be graphed and assessed.

Allow changing amount and date Users can change the calculated schedule amount and date (local)


Local settings are saved on the PC, and can be different for each PC on a network [PRWIN.INI]
Global settings are saved in the shared/ folder, and will be the same for every PC [SHARED/PRWINSHARED.INI]
Sites settings are saved with the site (although could be global)

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