Drought Irrigation Response Tool (DIRT)
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What is DIRT?
The Drought Irrigation Response Tool (DIRT) is an integrative platform that assists farmers in making irrigation scheduling decisions during the crop season. This tool is created to not only assist farmers with irrigation in drought years, but every year.
How does DIRT work?
Upon signing in, you will set up a field (or single irrigation set) using a map and some basic inputs such as crop type and planting date. This tool will pull daily weather data and calculate an ETO value for your field location. Using ETO and rainfall, the tool will estimate the soil moisture in the field and alert you when an irrigation event is needed. You will record an irrigation value when completing an irrigation set, which will also factor into the soil moisture estimate.
Who should use DIRT?
Louisiana farmers that apply irrigation by gravity systems (furrow irrigation) and grow corn, cotton, soybean, grain sorghum, or sugarcane can use this tool immediately.
Louisiana farmers who use other irrigation systems, such as center pivots, can use the tool but it has not been validated for accuracy using research data.
A custom feature for adjusting crop coefficients to irrigate any crop type will be added later.
For more information please visit: www.lsuagcenter.com/dirt