Photo Credit: Sergey Tokarev – Fotolia.com

Climate and water management
Water is at the very focus of global attention: Climate change will cause periods of more extreme rainfall relieved by periods of drought. Water systems have to become more robust and self-supporting in order to prevent damage by flooding and drought.

Climate change has serious consequences on availability of water, especially in the higher-lying deltas, meaning the river and water systems in rural areas, where periods of water surplus and water shortage are alternating ever more intensively. The varying supply also has an increasingly effect on the water quality. It is important that fresh water is usable and remains usable when stored temporarily.

Climate-proof solution
For climate-proof water management it is important to anticipate on extreme events by using excellent weather forecast data, sensor data on soil, water and hydrologic model data. At the RichWaterWorld project Eijkelkamp and partners created an innovative Adaptive Water Management Tool. This tool calculates the area water balance for different climatic scenarios. It integrates all regional historical, present and forecast conditions of weather using a soil water model (SWAP). From there, visualization of data and operational water management is executed.

Telemetric measurement systems
One of the very important integrated sensors is the Lufft WS501-UMB mounted on a four meter mast. Measuring solar radiation, air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed are most important factors for evaporation. The Lufft weather sensor is installed in the Lingezegen Park, which shall not only serve the visitors’ recreation but also as a research area for agricultural and environmental future goals.

The weather station is connected to the Eijkelkamp Global Data Transmitter Multiple (GDT-M) telemetric platform by a SDI12 interface.

About Eijkelkamp Agrisearch:
Royal Eijkelkamp is a supplier of soil and water research solutions located in Giesbeek, The Netherlands existing for over 100 years already and therefore has a great deal of knowledge and experience about using sensors to monitor the quality and quantity of climate, water as well as soil and approaches this as an integral whole. Any changes in precipitation and evaporation behavior, surface- and groundwater levels, temperature and soil moisture, can immediately be detected using different sensors.

Further information on http://richwaterworld.com/ and on https://en.eijkelkamp.com/projects/water-projects/richwaterworld-en.html

About the author: Hans van Rheenen works as Innovation Manager at Eijkelkamp Agrisearch Equipment. He is involved in product development and deals with intelligent environmental sensors controlled by the internet. Hans is member of the RichWaterWorld Project Team.