sowacs.com
					Irrigation of Commercial Forestry around the world.

• Dec 1998
  To determine water use efficiency the best data is from Isreal and India. I offer the following references which may be relevant
  Underground water use by eucalyptus trees in an arid climate, Cohen et al, Trees:Structure and function, 1997 p356-362 (Volcani Centre -Isreal)
  An article by Emaus and Cole, and another by Duff et al in a special issue of Aust J of Botany 1997 45:2.
  Biomass production & transpiration efficiencies in the Negev desert . Herwitz &Gutterman. Forest Ecology and management 1990 31 p 81-90
  Planting density effects of water use efficiency of trees and pasture in an agroforestry system. Eastam et al , New Zealand J of Forestry Science 1990 20:1 p39-51 (this may not seem relevant - but it gives info on extent of root systems of eucalypts)
  For mature eucalypts, I don't think it matters you irrigate - surface root systems are much wider than the canopy and VERY efficient. For younger trees as long as the water is not evaporating and is delivered within the root zone you should have good efficiency - ie drippers near the tree.The main problem in measuring water use of eucalytpts is finding how much water is used by the deep roots (up to 40m in some species) - but if you are only interested in production, that is a bonus not a problem
  Cliff Hignett
• Dec 1998
  Our first year (1997 season) poplar reports have replicated measurements of tree growth and replicated measurements of water applied and soil water potential in each plot over time. They are available by mail only. Fun experiments.
  Shock, C. C., E. B. G. Feibert and M. Saunders. 1998. Irrigation management for hybrid poplar production. Oregon State University Agricultural Experiment Station, Special Report 988. pp 64-71.
  Feibert, E. B. G., C. C. Shock and M. Saunders. 1998. Groundcovers for hybrid poplar establishment. Oregon State University Agricultural Experiment Station, Special Report 988. pp 72-77.
  Clint Shock
• Dec 1998
  Probably the definitive work on irrigation of eucalypts using subsurface drainage water from irrigation was done by the South Australian Department variously called SARDI or PISAR. The drainage water has a little nitrate but is certainly not the yummy mixture from sewage. Rob Stevens is the person to talk to at Loxton Research Centre. Drip irrigation was used and 5 levels of salinity. The least salty was Murray River water, probably averaging 450 EC. The main trial was E camludensis but other spp were also monitored
  Mark Dale Ph (03)5051 4530 Fax (03)5051 4534
• Dec 1998
  Contact James Moss of QDNR. He has been working on this particular area for his PhD thesis.
• Dec 1998
  We are working with apple and peach trees. The main techniques we use to schedule irrigation are electrotensiometers (in soil), and dentrometers (on plant) based on LVDT (Linear Variable Displacement Transducer). Electrotensiometers may have some problems with maintenance and heterogenity of soil deep, and also with preferent ways for water infiltration which could affect device's readings.Dendrometers gives you a continous response of the evolution and oscil.lations of, for instance, the trunk. This last method has the advantage that it's an actually measurement of plant response to the ambient conditions, for instance water supply and irrigation. Both methods can be automated.

  	Jordi Doltra
  	Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentària (IRTA)
  	Barcelona (Spain)
  	jordi.doltra@irta.es

• Dec 1998 Oregon
  Although we are mostly studying irrigated horticultural crops, we have a study on how irrigation criteria and water application effects hybrid poplar tree growth. Our irrigation treatments are determined by soil water potential using Watermark Soil Moisture Sensors (Irrometer Co., Riverside, CA). Water is applied using micro sprinklers (Nelson Irrigation, Walla Walla, WA). Hybrid poplar is remarkably responsive to small differences in soil water potential and applied water.
  Commercial poplar plantations in eastern Oregon cover about 70,000 acres, and are mostly irrigated using drip irrigation. Water is monitored using neutron probes and water use is estimated using automated stations.

  -- 
  Dr. Clinton C. Shock
  Malheur Experiment Station, Oregon State University 
  595 Onion Ave.  

• Dec 1998 Oak Ridge National LaboratoryThere are 2 large (about 35000 acres total) irrigated hybrid cottonwood fiber farms located in Oregon and Washington using Neutron probes to measure soil moisture for operational irrigation scheduling purposes.
  We are using crosses of several species of Populus, Trichocarpa, Deltoides and Nigra primarily.
  Most of the work is proprietary but there has been some work done by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that was recently published in Tree Physiology, principally authored by T. Tschaplinski and G. Gebre on drought resistance and osmotic potential.
  See two papers below that may or may not be the papers mentioned.

  Alan Kottwitz
  Irrigation Supervisor
  Boise Cascade Fiber Farm
  Wallula Washington

• Sylvan Systems designs, implements, manages and operates agroforestry systems for wood production and/or wastewater treatment -- Our focus is on solid wood products which can greatly improve the economic viability of agroforestry programs. Interested parties can visit Sylvan Systems on the web at www.sylvansystems.com.

• Australian work: Brian Meyers and Phil Polgaze of CSIRO, Canberra and their Wagga Wagga trial.
• Dec 1998South Australia. A Eucalypt woodlot was established here in South Australia about 5 years ago, for a trial into drainage water disposal (not quite effluent disposal, depending on your definition of effluent).
  Scheduling was carried out using the EnviroSCAN Capacitance system. Whilst I was not directly involved in the woodlot trial, some of the relevant officers are still around, and I could pass on any requests for information, or put you in direct contact.

  Mark Skewes
  Senior Water Management Officer
  Irrigated Crop Management Service
  Primary Industries & Resources South Australia
  PO Box 411
  Loxton   SA   5333

• Dec 98Californai - Dr. Roy SachsSeveral years ago, Dr. Roy Sachs of University of California did some work on this utilizing an automatic irrigation system driven by soil water potential and controlled by the IRROMETER Model "RA" swithching tensiometer. I do not recall seeing anything published and I believe that Dr. Sachs is now retired. But I have copied here one of his colleagues at the Davis campus, Dr. J. Heiner Lieth, who may have access to some of this information, if you would like to request it from him.

• http://www.ozemail.com.au/~hewlett/ where Brian White's Hardwood Investments Pty Ltd page describes some of the waste water options. (ie irrigating eucalypts with the water!) Based in Brisbane, Australia.

• NSW, Australia CSIRO Project Information Sheet Nr 24. " Here at the CSIRO we are running a project called FILTER - Filtration and Irrigated cropping for Land Treatment and Effluent Reuse. Site preparation entailed massive soil loosening and gypsum application to increase porosity, then installation of subsurface drains 1m deep and 10m apart. Then effluent water is applied to crops by flood irrigation. The drainage water from the subsurface drains has N,P levels well within EPA guidelines. Thus the soil acts as a filter. The crops grown on the site prevent an accumulation of nutrients. The trials have been on an 8 ha site, these have been so successful that the operation is to be expanded to eventually treat all the wastewater for a town of about 14 000 people. "
  For further information see the above web URL, or contactor

  Evan Christen, Ph.D.,                                 Dr N.S. Jayawardane
  Irrigation and Drainage Management for Horticulture   Project Leader
  CSIRO Division of Water Resources                     CSIRO Division of Water Resources
  Griffith Laboratory, Griffith                         Private Mail Bag 3
  NSW  2680, Australia                                  Griffith NSW 2680
  Tel # 61 69 601586, Fax # 61 69 601600                Phone: 069-601583 Fax: 069-601600
                                            email: nihal.jayawardane@griffith.dwr.csiro.au
  

• Some short rotation plantation on West Coast of US.
  There is a company in California, that have several ongoing projects on trees using subsurface drip and controling them by weather station,pan measurements and soil moisture sensors. They are having great success with their systems. If you are inteested please contact:
  DR. CLAUDE J. PHENE, SDI PLUS, P.O. BOX 314, CLOVIS, CA. 93613-0314
  PHONE:209-298-8068   FAX:209-298-0513
  
  There was some work done in California by the Simpson Timber company, I believe. See earlier editions of their newsletter "The California Eucalypt Grower". From reading this newsletter, there does seem to be a fair amount of irrigation of eucalypts going on... perhaps someone knows more?

• The New Zealand Massey Uni also worked on this. Ralph Sims has postgrads doing lysimeter trials to work out Euc water uptake.

• Recent work done in Turkey at the Eastern Mediterranean Forestry Research Institute by Gurses and Ozkurt.

• The South African trial on eucalypts at Mkuze, Zululand led by Mondi's Mike Howard while he was there.
  We have conducted a eucalypt irrigation experiment in Northern KwaZulu-Natal a few years back. If you'd like information and results, please let me know.
  

  -- 
  Simon Lorentz (PhD)
  Senior Process Hydrologist    Internet: lorentz@aqua.ccwr.ac.za
  Department of Agricultural Engineering  Tel:      Int+27 331 260-5701

• Carter Holt Harvey, one of the largest forestry groups in NZ, is, at their pulp and paper mill setting up waste water irrigation trials irrigatione Pinus radiata. (where waste water is involved irrigation is seen as a viable treatment alternative) The local authority is concerned about proposed application rates and potential ground water contamination on the rel free draining soils. We want to implement a deficit irrigation system, as aposed to a nondeficit which is commonly used. To do this we would like scheduling equipment capable of handling possibly up to 400ha. Hamish Lowe (pdp_chch@southern.co.nz)

• Luis Gurovic in Chile is also working on irrigating eucalypts. lgurovic@sas.puc.cl

• hardwood plantations irrigated with secondary treated effluent, north of Adelaide, Australia, but apparently this has been put on hold, in favour of irrigating vegetables!!? (See contact Peter Buss, below, for more).

• Any further offers?

Papers

Tree Physiology 18, 291-298 (1998)
Osmotic potential of several hardwood species as affected by manipulation of throughfall precipitation in an upland oak forest during a dry year
TIMOTHY J. TSCHAPLINSKI,* G. GEBRE and TERRI L. SHIRSHAC Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6422, USA, t2t@ornl.gov

Tree Physiology 18, 299-305 (1998)
Water relations of several hardwood species in response to throughfall manipulation in an upland oak forest during a wet year
G. MICHAEL GEBRE,* TIMOTHY J. TSCHAPLINSKI and TERRI L. SHIRSHAC Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6422, USA, gv4@ornl.gov

Blake, T.J. J.S. Sperry, T.J. Tschaplinski and S.S/. Wang. 1996.
Water relations. In:Biology of Populus and its Implications for Management and Conservation
Part. 11, Chapter 16. Edited by R,.F. Stettler et al. National Research Council of Canada Press, Ottawa, Ont. Pp. 401-422.

159 Interactions between drought and elevated CO2 on osmotic adjustment and solute concentrations of tree seedlings. By T. J. Tschaplinski, D. B. Stewart and R. J. Norby
OCTOBER 1995 VOLUME 131 NUMBER 2 The New Phytologist International Journal of the Plant Sciences

Subject:  Irrigation scheduling programmes

To fellow readers

I am in the search for equipment and software that I can use for
forestry irrigation scheduling.  Ideally I would like to know of
compatable equipment that can be used to measure soil moisture and
combine this information with real time weather data to schedule
irrigation requirements.  We can possibly get our hands on the met
station and soil moisture equipment, but are in need of computer
software to combine the data and develop an irrigation schedule.

Can anyone help or refer me onto people in the know.

Cheers
Hamish Lowe

Contact Peter Buss who has used the real-time multisensor
capacitance probes and monitoring system for continuous monitoring
moisture in hardwood plantations irrigated with secondary treated effluent,
north of Adelaide, Australia.
His address is: Peter Buss, Chairman-irrigation agronomist,
Sentek Pty Ltd, 69 King William Street, Kent Town, South
Australia, 5067, phone: (08) 363 0839, fax: (08) 362 8400.
100237.1224@compuserve.com
SENTEK@a011.aone.net.au 

Try Adcon Telemetry Inc. - +1 561 989 5309 in the US - Gunther
Walcher or in Austria - Alex Zrost at  +011-43-1-368-5516

From:     KEVIN B. BRONSON (trickle-l)
To:       trickle-l@unl.edu
Date:     Wednesday, October 30, 1996  7:41 am
Subject:  re: forestry irrigation scheduling

Potlatch Farms in northern Oregon has been raising cottonwood
trees (?25,000 acres)on drip for pulp for several years, and have as much
experience as anyone in that field.

Contact: John Olsen or Greg Roland (503)481-2620