Command Area Water Demands. II: Water‐Demand Function

Abstract

The cumulative water demand (CWD) curve was used for validating and calibrating the unit command area (UCA) model, which predicts the aggregate water demands of individual command areas for the entire crop season. During the model calibration process, as presented in the companion paper, three important variables in the operation stage on the prediction of demand were found to be dominant in determining the CWD curve profile. The logistic function with three parameters, which is a particular form of the exponential‐type function, was adopted for fitting the CWD curve. High correlations were observed between the individual curve parameters and the field variables. Three parameters are management‐allowable depletion (MAD), irrigation application uniformity (IAU), and initial soil moisture (ISM). Effectiveness of the equation developed for a particular UCA using the regression analysis was successfully demonstrated, and applicability for some other UCAs in the same water system was also recognized.