IrrigTool—A New Tool for Determining the Irrigation Rate Based on Evapotranspiration Estimated by the Thornthwaite Equation

Abstract

In the context of climate change, irrigation has become a must for ensuring crop production because in some regions, the drought episodes became more frequent. The decision to efficiently allocate water resources should be made quickly, based on tools that provide correct information with a low computational effort. Therefore, we propose a new user-friendly tool—IrrigTool—for assessing the irrigation rate considering the precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, soil type, and crop. IrrigTool implements the Thornthwaite equations and can be used to identify weakness due to drought stress and as an educational tool. Apart from the computation, it provides a graphical representation of the results and possible comparisons of the output for two locations. The application is built in Microsoft Excel for graphics and Visual Basic VBA. The user does not have programming knowledge to use it. Data on monthly precipitation and temperature data must be introduced in the specified fields, and after pressing the run button, the results are automatically displayed. The article exemplifies the functioning on data series from Romania’s Dobrogea region.

Keywords

• evapotranspiration
• irrigation
• soil water reserve
• water balance