Evapotranspiration

Evapotranspiration

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
I once did a story on evapotranspiration. Let me remind you what evapotranspiration is. Evapotranspiration is the amount of water evaporated from land or transpired from vegetation and it's synonymous with consumptive use or the amount of water used by irrigation." Pretty high powered and obtuse subject that you don't run into everyday. Then, I saw something about Idaho potato farmers using a water treatment technology from a company called Magnation Water Technologies. Well believe it or not, that word came up again as I was chatting with Magnation Water Technologies' marketing director Stef Jenzeh. She was telling me about water being made up of more than just H2O. There are also salts that are dissolved in water that farmers use for irrigation. " They are held in suspension so it is not that they are dissolving and dissipating into nothing, it is that they are getting broken apart into smaller, more bio-available water clusters that now can actually penetrate the soil. They go deeper and more thoroughly into the soil and that means that there is less evapotranspiration and less surface runoff which are the two major causes of water waste.

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