Abstract

Irrigation of residential properties in urban settings is typified by small and irregular areas, many untrained water users, limited end-use metering, and differing groundcover in contrast to agricultural settings. This makes analyzing irrigation patterns to promote efficient water use challenging. Analysis of Irrigation by Remote Sensing (AIRS) combines multispectral aerial imagery, evapotranspiration data, and ground-truthed measurements to overcome these challenges. We demonstrate the application of AIRS on eight neighborhoods in West Haven, Utah, using 0.6 m National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) and 0.07 m drone imagery, reference evapotranspiration (ET), and water meter data from Weber Basin Water Conservancy District (WBWCD). We calculate the difference between the actual and hypothetical water required for each parcel and compare water use over three time periods (2018, 2021, and 2023). We find that the quantity of overwatering as well as the number of customers overwatering are decreasing over time in the study area. This, however, could be impacted by the difference in precipitation between the three time periods. More generally, we find that NAIP and drone imagery are both sufficient to accurately measure irrigated area in urban settings and that the selection of a threshold value for the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) becomes less critical for higher-resolution imagery. AIRS can provide repeatable estimates of irrigated area and irrigation demand that would allow water utilities to track water user habits and landscape changes over time and, when controlling for other variables, see if water conservation efforts are effective.

Degree

College and Department

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering

Rights

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