Establishment and extension of information system for irrigation water quality monitoring and management

Water quality data collection and analysis are major tasks of irrigation water management in the irrigation associations. Due to the advance of information technology and widespread of internet, the regular water quality monitoring data can be uploaded, browsed, traced, and analyzed more efficiently by using of geographic information system and web browser. There are more than 2500 monitoring points located along irrigation canals, recording water quality data such as temperature, acidity, and electrical conductivity every other month, producing a great amount of data spatially and temporally. To manage those massive irrigation water sampling data, an integrated system, including data input, quality assurance/control and index calculated, is necessary for each character in this work. Traditional once every two month water quality sampling practice is too sparse for some malicious factory to discharge polluted waste water at night. The field automatic sampling instrument and GIS continuously report the readings and locations of the water quality condition thus enhance the efficiency of water quality monitoring. In addition, the source tracing, irrigate subject and the affected area analysis approaches can assist the complicated mission of pollution source location and polluted area delineation. However, the abovementioned function has to work with a complete irrigation canal geographic information system and a comprehensive pollution source database. To complete the irrigation GIS and database is one of the future objectives for the Agricultural Engineering Research Center.