Water distribution profiles in graded border irrigation systems

Abstract EN

Distribution of infiltrated water under surface irrigation significantly affects field application efficiency, distribution uniformity and overall irrigation efficiency.

Most of the available practices depend upon predicting infiltrated water distribution from advance and recession information and an average infiltration function.

No field studies have been conducted to check or verify the predicted water distribution profile.

Thus, the objective of this research was to actually measure water distribution profiles from graded border irrigation systems and to compare the measured profiles with those predicted by available theoretical procedures.

The results have indicated great differences between measured and predicted water distribution profiles.

Such differences between measured and predicted profiles have led to the conclusions that: infiltration functions obtained from cylinder infiltrometers did not represent infiltration phenomenon in surface irrigation.

When available techniques to predict water distribution profiles by using advance and recession information are used, a large number of infiltration tests must be conducted to obtain an approximate average infiltration function.

Evaluation of surface irrigation systems must be based upon actual measurements of water distribution profiles rather than predicted profiles.