Irrigation System Construction Photos – Finca Alzamora, UPRM Campus

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Irrigation System Construction Photos – Finca Alzamora, UPRM Campus

An irrigation system was designed and constructed for an organic fruit tree orchard in the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez campus farm, Finca Alzamora (Lat 18.220247°, Lon -67.145497°, see Figure 1).  The system has a capacity of irrigating up to 60 trees at a rate of 25 gallons per hour.  Currently there are approximately 30 small trees at the site.

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Figure 1. The organic fruit orchard is located on the left half of the hill.

The system consists of a 1.25 in. PVC mainline laid on the slope and 8 3/4 in. PVC laterals oriented along the topographic contours.  All PVC pipe will be buried 1 ft below the surface (Figure 2).  Two-gallon per hour pressure compensating emitters used.  Up to five drip emitters or micro-spray emitters can be used.  The system header is shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 2. 1.25 in. Mainline and 3/4 in. lateral PVC tubing.

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Figure 2. Irrigation system header and mainline. The header includes a ball valve, air vacuum relief valve, cumulative water meter, filter and pressure gauge.

Numerous students from Dr. Pablo Payam’s organic fruit production course and my irrigation course helped to construct the system.  Figure 4 shows students gluing together pieces of PVC pipe.  Click here to view more photos.

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Figure 4. UPRM Agronomy students helping to construct the irrigation system.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE PHOTOS

 

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Water Extremely Likely Wet. Pope Extremely Likely Catholic. CC Extremely Likely Man Made.

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Very good summary of data on climate change.

greenman3610's avatarThis is Not Cool

ipcc2013

Here’s a little known news item from an obscure organization that someone obviously is trying to hide by releasing it in a Friday news dump…oh, wait.

NYTimes:

A panel of experts appointed by the United Nations, unveiling its latest assessment of climate research, reinforced its earlier conclusions that global warming is real, that it is caused primarily if not exclusively by human emissions, and that it is likely to get substantially worse unless efforts to limit those emissions are rapidly accelerated.

“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes,” the report said. “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

Going well beyond its four previous analyses…

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Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare

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Obtained from: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034015/articlevideo2

The Port to Nowhere: PR’s lost opportunity

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Excerpted from The Puerto Rican English Blog:  http://prenglishblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-port-to-nowhere.html

Monday, September 9, 2013

The Port to Nowhere

(AKA “The Island of Disenchantment”)

Even though this is a relatively old article, it’s just so depressing to hear, and I had to share it and vent a little.

Ponce’s Port of the Américas’ transshipment potential rapidly fading away – at CaribbeanBusinessPR.com.

The Port of the Americas (aka the Port of Ponce) is PR’s opportunity to become a vital link in world trade, the only deep-water port in the Caribbean that could handle the super-huge PANAMAX container ships that traverse the Panama Canal. We were billed to become the “Singapore of the Caribbean”. We were set to reclaim our position as the 1st Port of the New World, the geographic axis connecting North America, South America, and Europe, and with the traffic from the Panama Canal, Asia as well. This is PR’s chance to grow rich and powerful off of basically just being there, sitting in the ocean exactly where it’s always been, which is the best way to get rich.  READ MORE…

Daily Reference Evapotranspiration (ETo) for Jamaica

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Daily reference evapotranspiration (ETo) is now available for Jamaica.  CLICK HERE to visit the new pragwater page, which provides a link to the daily image data and the method background information.  The page also provides information related to the practical application of the results for scheduling irrigation in Jamaica.

YESTERDAY’S ETo FOR JAMAICA:

DISCLAIMER: The information is provided “as is”. The authors and publishers of this information disclaim any loss or liability, either directly or indirectly as a consequence of applying the information provided herein, or in regard to the use and application of said information. No guarantee is given, either expressed or implied, in regard to the accuracy, or acceptability of the information.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This research received partial funding from the following sources: NOAA-CREST (grant NA06OAR4810162) and USDA Hatch Project (Hatch-402). Special thanks to Dr. John Mecikalski for providing the solar radiation data.  I would like to thank my student, Victor Reventos, who made the algorithm automation possible through his Python programming skills.

 

Courses offered this semester at UPRM: Farm Irrigation and Agroclimatology (TMAG)

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I will be offering the following two courses this semester at UPR-Mayaguez. Please click the following links for the course fliers.

TMAG 5017 Agroclimatology

TMAG 4019 Farm Drainage and Irrigation Systems

Please feel free to contact me if you would like additional information about either course.

Eric Harmsen, Professor
University of Puerto Rico
Dept. of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
Mayaguez, Puerto Rico 00681
email: harmsen1000@hotmail.com, eric.harmsen@upr.edu
phone: 787-955-5102
websites: http://pragwater.com , http://bahai.org

irrigation

Yemeni girl from YouTube wants education, not marriage

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Read article

child marriage

Coffee Propaganda …gotta love the animation in this one!

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MyCoffeeCalling's avatarMyCoffeeCalling

Simply amazing student work!
Im sure they’re lovers of the mighty bean.

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Daily Reference Evapotranspiration (ETo) for Haiti and the Dominican Republic

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Map_attribution

Daily reference evapotranspiration (ETo) is now available for Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  CLICK HERE to visit the new pragwater page, which provides a link to the daily image data and the method background information.  The page also provides information related to the practical application of the results for scheduling irrigation in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

reference_ET_PenmanMonteith20130729

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This research received partial funding from the following sources: NOAA-CREST (grant NA06OAR4810162) and USDA Hatch Project (Hatch-402). Special thanks to Dr. John Mecikalski for providing the solar radiation data, and Alejandra Rojas for providing various GIS maps used in this research. I would like to thank my student, Victor Reventos, who made this possible through his Python programming skills.

DISCLAIMER: The information is provided “as is”. The authors and publishers of this information disclaim any loss or liability, either directly or indirectly as a consequence of applying the information provided herein, or in regard to the use and application of said information. No guarantee is given, either expressed or implied, in regard to the accuracy, or acceptability of the information.

Google’s Megan Smith On The 2 Innovations That Will Get More Women Into Tech

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