Water accounting for conjunctive groundwater and surface water irrigation sources: A case study in the middle Heihe River Basin of arid northwestern China

Oases in arid northwestern China play a significant role in the region＇s economic stability and development. Overex- ploitation of the region＇s water resources has led to serious environmental consequences. In oases, irrigated agriculture is the primary consumer of water, but water shortages resulting from dramatically growing human needs have become a bottleneck for regional sustainable development, making effective management of the limited available water critical. Effective strategies must be formulated to increase agricultural productivity while reducing its environmental impacts. To support the development of such strategies, water use patterns were analyzed during the 2007 and 2008 growing seasons, from May to early October, to identify opportunities for improving water management using the Mold- en-Sakthivadivel water-accounting method, which combines groundwater and surface water into a single domain and can provide a good estimate of the uses, depletion, and productivity of water in a water basin context. The study area lies in Linze County, Gansu Province, China. In the study area, the inflow water resources consist of irrigation, precipita- tion, and soil water, which accounted for 89.3%, 8.9%, and 1.8% of the total in 2007, and 89.3%, 4.8%, and 5.9% in 2008, respectively. The irrigation depends heavily on groundwater, which accounted for 82.1% and 83.6% of the total irrigation water in 2007 and 2008, respectively. In 2007 and 2008, deep percolation accounted for 50.1% and 47.9% of the water outflow, respectively, with corresponding depleted fractions of 0.51 and 0.55, respectively. For the irrigation district as a whole, the water productivity was only 1.37 CNY/m^3. To significantly increase crop water productivity and prevent depletion of the region＇s groundwater aquifer, it will be necessary to reduce the amount of water used for ir- rigation. Several water-saving agricultural practices are discussed and recommended.

Parameters for Use of BEWAB＋ Programme to Schedule Irrigation of Pea （Pisum sativum L,）

A large portion of irrigation farmers make use of subjective （intuition） irrigation scheduling methods as supposed to objective or scientific irrigation scheduling methods, which need to be changed. The BEsproeiingsWAterbestuursprogram （BEWAB＋） irrigation scheduling programme is based on the water balance equation and needs： （1） a crop production function; （2） a relative consumptive water demand curve and （3） an allowable depletion subroutine. The objective of this paper was to describe research aimed at obtaining information on （1） and （2） for pea and also to describe the effect of water application on yield and water use of pea. BEWAB＋ uses this information to estimate the daily irrigation water requirements for a particular soil-crop-atmosphere system under irrigation. A field experiment, based on published line-source irrigation methodology, was conducted on a 3 m deep loamy fine sand Bainsvlei or Ustic Quartzipsamment soil near Bloemfontein （26°08′S; 29°01′E） in South Africa. Results showed that there is a linear relationship of the form Ys = 8.07ET - 249 （r2 = 0.91）, where Ys is the seed yield of pea （kg/ha） and ET is evapotranspiration for the growing season （mm）. The relative consumptive water demand curve is represented by the following third order polynomial function that describes the relationship between time and relative ET for a pea growing season of 120 days： ETrelx = 0.09419646 - 0.01302413x ＋ 0.00059008x2 - 0.00000371x3. ETrelz denotes relative ET and x denotes time in days. A workable balance between practical problem solving and advanced irrigation science has been established with BEWAB＋. Pre-plant irrigation schedules can be made for semi-arid areas with the BEWAB＋ programme using easily obtainable inputs, like target yield, soil depth and soil particle size distribution information.