Groundwater from the alluvial aquifer, the primary irrigation source for agriculture in the Lower Mississippi River Basin, is being pumped at an unsustainable rate. Austin Lewis, a graduate student in the College of Agriculture and Technology, is doing something about it. Using advanced technologies, Lewis determines the size of irrigation pipes, number and size of holes for each pipe, and time needed to uniformly irrigate each field. Lewis and his faculty mentor Dr. Michele Reba (USDA-ARS),are tracking furrow irrigation advance to verify the performance of the irrigation planning tool. “We place sensor units in the center and end of the furrows. This allows us to have sensors in several fields at one time and is an unstaffed way to measure the advance,” Lewis explained.
Incorporating the use of irrigation planning tools will allow producers to decrease water usage and increase profits. For his master’s thesis, Lewis is testing 14 sensor units in three cotton and three soybean fields. His work is funded by a Conservation Innovation Grant from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (with Drs. Michele Reba and Tina Gray Teague), with matching funds from the Judd Hill Foundation, Delta Plastics, University of Arkansas and University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and Technology. Lewis and Reba emphasize that collaboration is crucial to the success of their research. They have extensive collaboration with producers at the field sites and with other students, including Yin Lin “Jack” Chiu, an environmental sciences graduate student who designed the sensor units, and Cory Whitehurst, an undergraduate biology major who helps Lewis in the field.
“As an intern, my time in the field with Dr. Teague
awed me... those experiences solidified that I wanted
to pursue a career in research.”
Lewis’s interest in science developed as a teenager when he was recruited by Dr. Tina Gray Teague for a summer job helping with her field research. His experience with Dr. Teague was the first time he had been in the field and said, “It awed me. Then I spent two years as an intern with Bayer Crop Sciences and those experiences solidified that I wanted to pursue a career in research.” In the future he hopes to do research for corporations similar to Bayer. Of his career choice, Lewis comments, “Research is fun for me. It’s challenging, but it’s a good challenge and I like challenges.”
