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Water Conservation in Irrigated Agricultural Systems

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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water, Agriculture and Aquaculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 13131

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Jean L. Steiner

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Guest Editor

Kansas State University, Manhattan, USA
Interests: climate change; soil and water conservation; sustainable agricultural systems

Prof. Dr. Eduardo A. Santos

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Guest Editor

Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University, Manhattan, United States
Interests: climate change; water management; evapotranspiration; trace gas measurements

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With a global population of 7.8 billion people, projected to grow to about 10 billion over the next 30 years, current and future food insecurity is an urgent threat. At the same time, a changing climate poses uncertainty about future productive capacity in many of the worlds breadbaskets. As temperatures increase and precipitation becomes less certain, irrigated agriculture will be important to sustain food production, but water supplies are finite and in many cases over-allocated or declining in quality. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of the human water use, so finding ways to sustain irrigated agriculture, while conserving water for other critical needs is essential. New technologies, management systems, and policies are needed in major irrigated regions that are experiencing groundwater depletion, water quality degradation, land salinization, or shifting seasonality of water supply. Additionally, the potential for sustainable irrigation in existing rainfed agricultural regions needs to be explored.

The main purpose of this Special Issue is to propose a series of papers which address the many facets of irrigated agriculture, spanning from the water resource base which is at risk from climate change, quality degradation, and over-allocation; improved technologies to enhance the efficiency of water use; new cropping systems to better match water supply to productivity; and biophysical and social effects of irrigated agricultural systems as affected by management and policy.

Papers with multidisciplinary study approaches will be particularly appreciated.

Prof. Dr. Jean L. Steiner
Prof. Dr. Eduardo A. Santos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

irrigation
climate change
water policy
water management
technology

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 2080 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Temporal and Local Heterogeneities of Water Table Depth under Different Agricultural Water Management Conditions

by Jonathan A. Lafond, Silvio J. Gumiere, Virginie Vanlandeghem, Jacques Gallichand, Alain N. Rousseau and Pierre Dutilleul

Water 2021, 13(16), 2148; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w13162148 - 05 Aug 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2414

Abstract

Integrated water management has become a priority for cropping systems where subirrigation is possible. Compared to conventional sprinkler irrigation, the controlling water table can lead to a substantial increase in yield and water use efficiency with less pumping energy requirements. Knowing the spatiotemporal distribution of water table depth (WTD) and soil properties should help perform intelligent, integrated water management. Observation wells were installed in cranberry fields with different water management systems: Bottom, with good drainage and controlled WTD management; Surface, with good drainage and sprinkler irrigation management; Natural, without drainage, or with imperfectly drained and conventional sprinkler irrigation. During the 2017–2020 growing seasons, WTD was monitored on an hourly basis, while precipitation was measured at each site. Multi-frequential periodogram analysis revealed a dominant periodic component of 40 days each year in WTD fluctuations for the Bottom and Surface systems; for the Natural system, periodicity was heterogeneous and ranged from 2 to 6 weeks. Temporal cross correlations with precipitation show that for almost all the sites, there is a 3 to 9 h lag before WTD rises; one exception is a subirrigation site. These results indicate that automatic water table management based on continuously updated knowledge could contribute to integrated water management systems, by using precipitation-based models to predict WTD. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Conservation in Irrigated Agricultural Systems)

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17 pages, 826 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Can Irrigation Conditions Improve Farmers’ Subjective Well-being? An Investigation in Rural Pakistan

by Abdul Majeed Nadeem, Tariq Ali, Wei Wei, Qi Cui and Shaoan Huang

Water 2021, 13(4), 505; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w13040505 - 16 Feb 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3159

Abstract

In many developing countries, including Pakistan, the enormous water losses due to outdated irrigation infrastructure threaten livelihoods and food security, while investment in the development of efficiency improvements can help the countries to cope with water scarcity and improve farmers’ wellbeing. This study evaluates how rural farmers’ decisions regarding improving irrigation watercourses and other irrigation conditions affect their wellbeing. We employ hypothesis testing and an ordered logit model on field survey data of 300 farming households from rural Pakistan. The mean test results suggest that farmers on lined watercourses are happier than those on unlined and partially lined watercourses. The regression results suggest that farmers on a fully lined watercourse have higher wellbeing than those on a partially lined watercourse. The time taken by canal water and groundwater to reach farmers’ land reduces their wellbeing. Irrigation quotas, the return of stolen water and the distance of groundwater sources from land have positive effects on farmers’ wellbeing. The study establishes a strong correlation between irrigation conditions, improved irrigation network and farmers’ wellbeing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Conservation in Irrigated Agricultural Systems)

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14 pages, 4159 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Simulation and Verification of Hydraulic Performance and Energy Dissipation Mechanism of Perforated Drip Irrigation Emitters

by Shaobo Xing, Zhenhua Wang, Jinzhu Zhang, Ningning Liu and Bo Zhou

Water 2021, 13(2), 171; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w13020171 - 13 Jan 2021

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 2158

Abstract

Drip irrigation has become an application trend of water-saving irrigation technology due to its excellent water-use efficiency. However, the energy dissipation form of the commonly used labyrinth channel is relatively simple, and the corresponding energy dissipation mechanism research is inadequate. This article proposes a new kind of channel structure of drip irrigation emitters based on the structure of scalariform perforation plates in plant xylem vessels. We establish a total of 16 sets of orthogonal structure schemes. Using numerical simulation and physical experiments, the hydraulic performance and energy dissipation mechanism of the perforated drip irrigation emitters (PDIE) are studied. The results show that the flow index of PDIE is 0.4665–0.5266. The hydraulic performance of PDIE in the high-pressure zone is the best, and the flow index is 0.4665–0.5046. As the pressure increases, the velocity of the flow of the upper perforation increases rapidly, the flow ratio decreases, the flow index decreases, and the hydraulic performance improves. To further verify the energy dissipation mechanism, a lower flow ratio and a better hydraulic performance were obtained through appropriately expanding the upper part of the upper perforation inlet to the channel boundary. The research sheds new insights for optimizing the hydraulic performance of PDIE. Results reported here provide a theoretical basis for the structural design of drip irrigation emitters and the energy dissipation mechanism research. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Conservation in Irrigated Agricultural Systems)

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Review

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20 pages, 3633 KiB

Open AccessReview

Policy, Technology, and Management Options for Water Conservation in the Ogallala Aquifer in Kansas, USA

by Jean L. Steiner, Daniel L. Devlin, Sam Perkins, Jonathan P. Aguilar, Bill Golden, Eduardo A. Santos and Matt Unruh

Water 2021, 13(23), 3406; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/w13233406 - 02 Dec 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4113

Abstract

The Ogallala Aquifer underlies 45 million ha, providing water for approximately 1.9 million people and supporting the robust agriculture economy of the US Great Plains region. The Ogallala Aquifer has experienced severe depletion, particularly in the Southern Plains states. This paper presents policy innovations that promote adoption of irrigation technology, and management innovations. Innovation in Kansas water policy has had the dual effects of increasing the authority of the state to regulate water while also providing more flexibility and increasing local input to water management and regulation. Technology innovations have focused on improved timing and placement of water. Management innovations include soil water monitoring, irrigation scheduling, soil health management and drought-tolerant varieties, crops, and cropping systems. The most noted success has been in the collective action which implemented a Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA), which demonstrated that reduced water pumping resulted in low to no groundwater depletion while maintaining net income. Even more encouraging is the fact that irrigators who have participated in the LEMA or other conservation programs have conserved even more water than their goals. Innovative policy along with creative local–state–federal and private–public partnerships are advancing irrigation technology and management. Flexibility through multi-year allocations, banking of water not used in a given year, and shifting water across multiple water rights or uses on a farm are promising avenues to engage irrigators toward more sustainable irrigation in the Ogallala region. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Conservation in Irrigated Agricultural Systems)

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