Consumptive Use and Water Requirements for Utah (TP-75)

By: A. L. Huber, F. W. Haws, T. C. Hughes, J. M. Bagley, K. G Hubbard, and E. A. Richardson

Reliable guides or standards for estimating water requirements are essential for the planning, design, and operation of any water using enterprise. Particularly in a state like Utah, where water demands are high relative to the availability of supplies, and where it is imperative that as many uses as possible be satisfied, it is important that water requirements in various uses be accurately quantified.

Recognizing the widespread importance of information on unit water use, water administrators, planners, and managers have sought to obtain reliable values of water need, particularly for the major uses such as irrigated agriculture, municipal, and industrial. Concomitant with the establishment of the Office of the State Engineer have been efforts to determine the duty of water in various uses. Historically and presently, water use for irrigated agriculture has been the predominant use of water in Utah. Therefore, much research emphasis has been placed on determining water requirements of various crops grown in different regions of the state. A most significant distillation of water use information and guide to its use was Technical Publication No.8, Consumptive Use of Water and Irrigation Requirements of Crops' in Utah published by the State Engineer in 1952. This popular publication has been widely used in Utah and elsewhere as a basis for estimating crop water requirements. An updated and expanded version of the 1952 publication was issued in 1962 under the title Consumptive Use and Water Requirements for Utah. The revised edition included information about water requirements in municipal, industrial, and recreational uses as we 11 as agricultural. A further updating reflecting the state of the art in research and the accumulation of additional data upon which water requirements in various uses are derived constitutes this present report. A note-worthy improvement is the incorporation of techniques to permit the calculation of agricultural consumptive use at any geographic point of interest without going through some complicated extrapolation from a particular weather station location.

Other Information:
Published: 1982
Pages: 92 p.
Plates: 2 pl.
Location: Utah Statewide
Media Type: Paper Publication