Software for the management of weather stations and for agrometeorological calculations

Abstract

Surface weather stations in agricultural areas are commonly managed non-professionally, usually in areas with more than one station. Climate is defined as the average meteorological conditions of a region, and knowledge of climate is essential for agricultural development. We have developed a program for the management of meteorological data from different automatic weather stations capable of estimating evapotranspiration, water-balance components, and crop yields. The software System for Water Balance (SYSWAB) was developed using Java as the programming language and MySQL as the database management system. The user can choose among 6 evapotranspiration models in the system, the water balance calculations followed the Thornthwaite and Mather (1955) model. The software calculates the potential and actual yield following the Doorenbos and Kassam (1979) method (FAO). SYSWAB was tested by estimating the evapotranspiration and actual yield for a coffee crop. The evapotranspiration ranged from 70 to 113 mm in the months with high temperatures and from 40 to 70 mm in months with lower temperatures. SYSWAB accurately estimated the yield. The observed and simulated yields did not differ significantly at p<0.01. The FAO model used was thus accurate, and the program algorithm was sound. The program can be downloaded free of charge at: http://comp.muz.ifsuldeminas.edu.br/downloads/ver/syswab-system-for-water-balance.