SCADA Based Rainfall Simulation and Precision Lysimeters with Open Top Climate Chambers for Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Resource Losses in Semi-arid Regions

K Sammi Reddy ,T Saikrishna,V Maruthi ,M Vanaja

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-59148-9_30

Abstract

Semi-arid agriculture (55% of net sown area) in India suffers from rainfall vagaries like extreme events of high intensity and drought due to climate change which damages the crops and losses to the farming community. In order to assess the crop loss due to extreme events and changes in the soil water balance and crop coefficients due to increased CO2 and Temp, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) integrated with Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and data loggers have been used for integrating soil moisture sensors at different depths (15–90 cm), turbidity sensors, tipping bucket counter sensor for rainfall simulator with 3 soil bins of size 6 × 3 m with 1 depth soil column. The system has portable rainfall simulator which can move over soil bins for operating the rainfall simulator with rainfall intensities of 75–150 mm/h. PLC was programmed to bring HMI controls for operating rainfall simulator at different intensities and durations, and the slope of the soil bins varying from 1 to 10% through hydraulic lifts. The lysimeter system with open-top chambers of CO2 + Temp, eCO2, eTemp and control at ambient conditions has been constructed by using the load cells for measuring the weight of soil, sensors for soil moisture measurement with 4–20 mA electric signal at different depths ranging from 15 to 120 cm. CO2 sensor and RTD temperature sensors have been used for monitoring the CO2 and temperature. The systems are configured for maintaining 550 ± 50 ppm CO2 and temperature increase from 1 to 5 °C from SCADA through PLC. The systems are designed with the state of art process automation smart instrumentation for assessing the soil water balance changes with respect to changes in temp and CO2 levels through lysimeters and the production loss and soil, water and nutrient losses from soil column due to occurrence of extreme events of high-intensity rainfall.

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