| Publication date | February 21, 2019 |
|---|---|
| Sector | Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries |
| Region name | Overseas（United States of America） |
In arid areas like California, irrigation is indispensable for farming. However, there are concerns that climate change may increase the risk of droughts and changes in rainfall patterns; therefore appropriate irrigation is necessary to ensure sustainable agricultural production.
Farmers need to consider the timing and extent of irrigation, to help with this irrigation forecasting systems called CIMIS (California Irrigation Management Information System) are provided by the State of California (Fig. 1). In this system, weather data collected by different observation stations are automatically collated and stored on a database server, and analyzed by a central computer. Users can access weather data via the Internet (Fig. 2).
CIMIS knowledge is expected to help farmers determine when and how much irrigation is appropriate for their needs.
