OptiSurface Newsletter – 2019 March

OptiSurface‏ @OptiSurface Feb 25

“After significant rainfall, I flew up in my plane and got some pictures. As far as you can see, ponds are gleaming in everybody’s field. I looked into my field which I had just OptiSurfaced and there wasn’t one pond standing on that field.” Jeff Kelly, Illinois, United States

OptiSurface‏ @OptiSurface Mar 8

OptiSurface Case Study. Fixing ponding issues and forcing overflow water from the creek entering the field in NW corner to flow along the west edge.

OptiSurface‏ @OptiSurface Mar 18

The client is in Central Nevada and grow alfalfa and wheat under center pivots. He states his problem as:

This example plants alfalfa and winter wheat over a pivot. The field is planted without furrows and can drain to any direction as long as it goes out to the boundary. The design was straight forward – OptiSurface 4Way with 0.10% minimum slope and 1.0% maximum slope and 300ft/% smoothing.  The cross slope parameter, if ticked OFF, follows the set parameters on the Main Slope but can still be ticked ON and have it’s own parameters.

Proposed Flow Paths

The image below shows how water flows and meanders across the field then exits at the boundary without causing any ponding.

Overview: OptiSurface 4Way is a Surface Type which can drain in any way (4Way) and meander across the field as long as it is continually falling to some location on the boundary. This suits crops grown WITHOUT furrows where the water can drain in any direction. All locations on the field have positive slope towards the boundary (i.e no depression areas to hold water). An example application is rainfed wheat where it is planted on a flat soil surface (no furrow) and water can drain in any direction. Note: it is called OptiSurface4Way because in actual fact the calculated surface falls in only 4 directions of the calculation grid (eg North, South, East or West or similar depending on grid rotation setting). This can produce jagged flow paths which can be smoothed using the slope smoothing (Slope max change) and breaklines.

Displayed by:
Menu: Tools > Landform Design > Surface Type > OptiSurface 4Way

Refer to the Design of the Month above for an example.

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