Welcome to the EID IMS Homepage

The Irrigation Management Service (IMS) program was developed in the late 1970s through cooperation with local growers, EID, the University of California Cooperative Extension, and local, state, and federal governments.  The program uses weather and soil moisture information to provide growers with suggested irrigation dates and run times.  Currently, the program uses a neutron probe once a week to determine the soil moisture status and to access weather information from the California Irrigation Management Information Service's (CIMIS)  station #13, located in Camino.  This information is entered automatically into the irrigation scheduling prediction software (TrueISM), which calculates irrigation dates and duration.  Participating growers receive the information in a weekly Grower Report  by e-mail.  There are currently 100 growers using the information to schedule irrigations on 2,500 acres.  At no cost to participants, the program is offered to all agriculture-metered irrigation accounts in EID's service area.  Contact Kirk Taylor, IMS Coordinator, at 530-642-4166 or IMSProgram@eid.org if you would like more information about the program.

Future Improvements

IMS is currently involved in the following grant-funded studies to improve program efficiency and effectiveness. 

• Install soil moisture sensors and a data logger at all monitoring sites. Funding for the study was obtained from the National Resource Conservation Service's Conservation Innovation Grant program. The data loggers allow growers to access the soil moisture staus at any time instead of relying on a weekly report.  The loggers can also  monitor the progress and effectiveness of an irrigation.

• The El Dorado County Water Agency is supplying funds to investigate remote access of data logger information.  Under the study, EID is placing radio transmitters on the data loggers so that information can be gathered without physically entering a growing area.  This ultimately reduces the time and resources needed to gather the soil moisture information.

• The U. S. Bureau of Reclamation is supplying funding for two studies--. additional funding in support of the County Water Agency study and funding to purchase two evapotranspiration-capable weather stations.

Access past this point is restricted to growers participating in the IMS Progam.

EID is currently developing the pages and resources for growers participating in the IMS program to view their individual reports through a link on this page.  The link will be available for the 2008 irrigation season.