ABSTRACT:

This dataset supports the manuscript titled “Agricultural water balance and variability in Utah Irrigation Canal Companies with OpenET products and spatial data” associated with https://doi.org/10.1007/s00271-026-01172-8. The dataset folder "Torres_MeasurementRT4Utah_Paper1Data", was originally organized for the USDA Secure Water Future project repository. It contains two main subfolders: “Raw” which includes data downloaded from the original sources, and “Processed,” which includes the GIS, raster, and tabular datasets generated during the study.

The study coupled historical remote sensing data from OpenET and gridMET with GIS datasets, including field boundaries, canal distribution information, and agricultural water diversion records, to implement a monthly water balance model for three irrigation canal companies (ICCs) in Northern Utah. The water balance model evaluated precipitation, irrigation, capillary rise from groundwater (CR), actual crop evapotranspiration (ETc act), runoff, deep percolation (DP), and change of water depletion at the root zone (∆Dr). The water balance residual (WBR) was calculated as the unresolved portion of the balance and may reflect runoff, DP, other unquantified hydrologic exchanges, and uncertainty (CR was considered only where supported by site conditions). The spatial distribution of ∆Dr was estimated using a Random Forest model based on local observed data such ETc act, and soil water content. Monthly WBR values were highest during the peak irrigation season (July–August). Seasonally, from April to October, WBR represented approximately 5–29% of the sum of all water balance components across the studied ICCs. These values should be interpreted as illustrative screening ranges rather than measured water savings or directly recoverable water volumes.