Abstract
Dryland irrigation is a major concern in arid and semiarid regions where agricultural output is low and water a scarce and vital resource. Irrigation efficiency and sustainability are, therefore, of paramount importance in these regions, where small farmers generally over-irrigate vegetables to avoid yield loss, resulting in excessive water consumption, unnecessary water pumping costs, and soil degradation. Improving dryland irrigation support requires field data, which is often scarce and unreliable in developing countries, being mostly collected manually with obsolete equipment. Modern automatic weather stations are costly, and local resources for station repair and maintenance are limited. The research project Info4Dourou2.0 aims to improve environmental data collection in developing countries by using low-cost wireless sensors networks (WSN). Hydrometeorological stations have been designed specifically for harsh environmental conditions and the limited local resources. They are simple to install and require little maintenance. The collected data is available in real time via a mobile phone and a web interface. These completely automatic stations have been developed by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the start-up sensorscope, with the aim of being manufactured, assembled, maintained, and commercialized locally. Results of the present study show that by coupling autonomous and continuous measurements of meteorological variables with soil-water-plant-atmosphere models, we have designed a simple irrigation management system that has a strong potential to improve agricultural production: up to a 38 % yield increase has been achieved using 20 % less water compared to the unassisted way of irrigating.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
AEC Systems (n.d.). Using granular matrix soil moisture sensors. http://aecdatalog.com/irrigation/gms/. Accessed 21 May 2013.
Allen, R. G., Pereira, L. S., Raes, D., & Smith, M., (1998). Crop Evapotranspiration (guidelines for computing crop water requirements). FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 56. Rome, Italy: FAO—Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Barrenetxea, G., Ingelrest, F., Schaefer, G., & Vetterli, M. (2008). SensorScope: The hitchhiker’s guide to successful wireless sensor network deployment. Proceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensors Systems, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Brouwer, C., & Heibloem, M. (1986). Irrigation water management: Irrigation water needs. Rome, Italy: FAO—Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Chigerwe, J., Manjengwa, N., van der Zaag, P., Zhakata, W., & Rockström, J. (2004). Low head drip irrigation kits and treadle pumps for smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe: A technical evaluation based on laboratory tests. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 29(15–18), 1049–1059.
Ingelrest, F., Barrenetxea, G., Schaefer, G., Vetterli, M., Couach, O., & Parlange, M. (2010). Sensorscope: Application-specific sensor network for environmental monitoring. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), 6(2), 17.
Ioslovich, I., & Gutman, P.-O. (2001). A model for the global optimization of water prices and usage for the case of spatially distributed sources and consumers. Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, 56(4–5), 347–356.
IRROMETER Company, Inc. (n.d.). http://www.irrometer.com/. Accessed 13 January 2015.
Jones, H. G. (2004). Irrigation scheduling: Advantages and pitfalls of plant-based methods. Journal of Experimental Botany, 55(407), 2427–2436. doi:10.1093/jxb/erh213.
Mande, T., Ceperley, N., Weijs, S. V., Repetti, A., & Parlange, M. B. (2014). Toward a new approach for hydrological modeling: A tool for sustainable development in a savanna agro-system. In J.-C. Bolay, S. Hostettler, & E. Hazboun (Eds.), Technologies for sustainable development: A way to reduce poverty (pp. 85–98). Paris, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, London: Springer.
Mermoud, A., Tamini, T. D., & Yacouba, H. (2005). Impacts of different irrigation schedules on the water balance components of an onion crop in a semi-arid zone. Agricultural Water Management, 77(1–3), 282–295.
Netafim (n.d.). Drip irrigation system. http://www.netafim.com/. Accessed 13 January 2015.
Simoni, S., Padoan, S., Nadeau, D. F., Diebold, M., Porporato, A., Barrenetxea, G., et al. (2011). Hydrologic response to an alpine watershed: Application of a meteorological wireless sensor network to understand streamflow generation. Water Resources Research, 47(10).
Simunek, J., Sejna, M., & van Genuchten, M Th. (1999). The hydrus-2D software package for simulating two-dimensional movement of water, heat, and multiple solutes in variably saturated media. Version 2.0. IGWMC—TPS—53 (p. 251). Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado: International Ground Water Modeling Center.
Steduto, P., Hsiao, T. C., Fereres, E., & Raes, D. (2012). Crop yield response to water. Rome, Italy: FAO—Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Thompson, R. B., Gallardo, M., Valdez, L. C., & Fernández, M. D. (2007). Using plant water status to define threshold values for irrigation management of vegetable crops using soil moisture sensors. Agricultural Water Management, 88(1–3), 147–158.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ranquet Bouleau, C., Baracchini, T., Barrenetxea, G., Repetti, A., Bolay, JC. (2015). Low-Cost Wireless Sensor Networks for Dryland Irrigation Agriculture in Burkina Faso. In: Hostettler, S., Hazboun, E., Bolay, JC. (eds) Technologies for Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16247-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16247-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16246-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16247-8
eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)