The Henaya Irrigated Perimeter (HIP) is an agricultural area irrigated by treated wastewater (TWW) of Ain El Hout treatment plant. Various analyses have shown that i) this water has low concentration of heavy metals and toxic elements, ii) the average values of the physicochemical parameters for 136 samples are satisfactory (29.2 mg O2∙dm–3 for chemical oxygen demands – COD, 13.14 mg O2∙dm–3 for biological oxygen demands – BOD, 14.2 mg∙dm–3 of suspended matter – SM, 1.82 mg∙dm–3 of N-NO3, 7.7 for pH and 927.74 μS∙cm–1 for electric conductivity – EC). Thirdly, it contains a high number of bacteria and nematodes (7200 CFU∙(100 dm3)–1 for faecal coliforms and 30 eggs∙dm–3 for intestinal Nematodes) which makes it dangerous for groundwater contamination. The objective in this work is to characterize the TWW and evaluate the impact of it use for irrigation on the quality of Hennaya groundwater. Before this, one has to prove that there is an amount of TWW that feeds the water table to show that there is a risk of pollution. We then estimated the aquifer minimum recharge value by TWW using the Thormthwaite meth-od. The estimation has given 92 mm which is an important quantity. The results of the groundwater microbiological anal-yses reveal no sign of contamination. The cause is the efficiency of the degradation of pollutants of the Vadose zone. The soil purifying power Md of the HIP was evaluated by the Rehse method and gave values ranging from 2.1 to 12.7 which indicated a complete purification.
The paper characterizes the status, trends and perspectives of irrigation in Poland after the reforms in agriculture and technology. Irrigation in Poland has supplemental character. It is used in short periods during the growing season and plays an important role in mitigating the effects of drought on crop production. Sub-irrigation from ditches is applied on permanent grasslands, sprin-kling – in field cultivation of arable crops, sprinkling and drip irrigation – in vegetable growing in open areas, micro-jets and drip irrigation systems – in orchards. Drip irrigation and micro-jets sys-tems are also applied in plant cultivation in greenhouses.
Under the economic conditions of Polish agriculture irrigation is often an unprofitable measure. The existing irrigation systems and facilities are only used to a small extent. After changes in the forms of ownership in agriculture, the large-area sprinkling systems were degraded. Small irrigation systems, mainly drip irrigation and micro-sprinkler irrigation, have recently become more common in private farms. Sub-irrigation systems are largely degraded and used only to a small extent if at all. In order to use these systems more effectively, it is necessary to reconstruct and modernize them. In many cases the factor preventing the use of irrigation systems is the deficit of water of required qual-ity and its availability. Besides unfavourable economic conditions, it is one of the main limitations in the development of irrigation in Poland.
Uncertainties as to how the climate will change and how it will influence the necessities and trends of irrigation development lead to a number of serious questions to be answered in the near future. How irrigation and water systems will have to adapt to climate changes is a challenge that planners, designers and O&M services will have to cope with.
It is widely accepted that air temperature in Poland will increase of 2–4°C, however a total yearly precipitation will not vary yet its pattern during the year may change towards higher in winter and lower in summer. Evapotranspiration and crop water demand may rise due to both an increase in temperature and duration of crop growth cycles.
Three main factors are expected to exert an accelerating influence on the development of irrigation: increased frequency and intensity of droughts and long-lasting precipitation-free periods with the high insolation and high air temperatures resulting from climate change; the intensification of agricultural production (e.g. in horticulture, orchards, seed crops), being forced by both domestic and European free-market competition; the necessity of reaching high level of quality for the majority of agricultural products.
To mitigate negative effects of climate change and extreme events, appropriate adaptation methods and adaptation strategies should be developed and implemented in existing irrigation and water control systems. A number of technological and organisational steps should be taken to improve operation, management, administration and decision making processes.
Water is a sensitive and limited resource, mainly in intensively used agricultural areas in Austria, where groundwater is used as drinking water as well as for irrigation purposes. In order to guarantee a sustainable use of irrigation water, soil water measurement devices can be used to opti-mise irrigation, which means that controlling the soil water content in the entire root system may prevent water stress due to water deficiency on the one hand, and over wetting on the other hand. Furthermore, losses of nutrients due to leaching can be avoided. Several research studies on that topic were initiated during the last few years. The soil water status on selected fields planted with different crops (onions, carrots, sugar beets, sweet maize, zucchini) was monitored continuously by FDR (Fre-quency Domain Reflectometry) soil water measurement devices. Sensors in different depths measure the plant water uptake in the root zone under standard irrigation practices on different sites and dif-ferent soils, respectively. The deepest sensor is installed to avoid deep percolation caused by over irrigation. By means of these data, irrigation could be regulated based on the actual plant water re-quirements to keep the soil water content within an ideal range for crop development.
The irrigation system control is identified as a complex hierarchical process of stochastic nature, at the head of which the uncertainties, caused by random variations of meteorological factors (climate) and diversion capacity regime from irrigation canals, were laid.
Under such conditions application of the determinate methods for irrigation system control regarding the effectiveness surrenders to the formalistic and empirical methods.
The most appropriate method is the developed by us, method of preventive control.
As a result of retrospective analysis, to each system status, for example, diversion capacity, it is fixed the factors which lead to its changes, for example, rain layer or total evaporation. To every consequence “factor – system status” it is fixed the indicator and it is determined the probability of its exceeding in retrospective series.
The control is in following of such indicator dynamics, forecasting of the most probably changes within system status and adjustment of the water delivery regime to canal reaches with diversion capacity regime from irrigation canals by means of standard preventive graphical chats of water flow control within hydraulic structures and pumping stations.
Use of such control method allows to minimize the uncertainty influence, also it does not require the major modifications in the design and engineering infrastructure.
As an exception can be the measures, directed to the increase of self-regulating qualities of irrigation systems, namely the ability of on-line water volume control, which is regulated in the idle capacities, provided in canal beds or special reservoirs.
The example of such decision in practice is the Kakhovskaya irrigation system in the South of Ukraine. The use factor of water resources on this system reaches 0.85, the technological discharge water does not exceed 7%, the deficit of productive moisture reserve in soil at the end of interirrigation period does not exceed 20% and all these data were obtained under adverse weather conditions.
CropSyst (Cropping Systems Simulation) is used as an analytic tool for studying irrigation water management to increase wheat productivity. Therefore, two field experiments were conducted to 1) calibrate CropSyst model for wheat grown under sprinkler and drip irrigation systems, 2) to use the simulation results to analyse the relationship between applied irrigation amount and the resulted yield and 3) to simulate the effect of saving irrigation water on wheat yield. Drip irrigation system in three treatments (100%, 75% and 50% of crop evapotranspiration – ETc) and under sprinkler irrigation system in five treatments (100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, and 20% of ETc) were imposed on these experiments. Results using CropSyst calibration revealed-that results of using CropSyst calibration revealed that the model was able to predict wheat grain and biological yield, with high degree of accuracy. Using 100% ETc under drip system resulted in very low water stress index (WSI = 0.008), whereas using 100% ETc sprinkler system resulted in WSI = 0.1, which proved that application of 100% ETc enough to ensure high yield. The rest of deficit irrigation treatments resulted in high yield losses. Simulation of application of 90% ETc not only reduced yield losses to either irrigation system, but also increased land and water productivity. Thus, it can be recommended to apply irrigation water to wheat equal to 90% ETc to save on the applied water and increase water productivity.
The accumulation and translocation of trace metals in soil and in sugarcane crop irrigated with treated effluents from sugar industry compared to soil and sugarcane crop irrigated with bore-well water were determined. In the present study the impact of irrigation with treated effluent from the sugar industry on the trace metal contamination of sugarcane juice was assessed. It revealed that the mean concentrations of Cd, Pb, Cu, Mn and Zn in the soil of fields irrigated with effluent and in juice from sugarcane grown on such fields were higher than those from bore-well water irrigated fields. The concentrations of trace metals in treated effluent exceeded the permissible limits of the Indian standards (Central Pollution Control Board-2000). The concentrations of Cd, Pb, Cu and Zn in juice of sugarcane grown on fields irrigated with effluent also exceeded the permissible limits of Indian standards and WHO/FAO expert committee recommendations. Their concentrations in juice of sugarcane grown in fields irrigated with bore-well water were within the limits of safety, except for Cd. The transfer factor for Zn was considerably higher than those of the other trace metals. The metal concentrations of sugarcane juice showed significant correlations with those of soil, which was not the case when bore well water was used for irrigation.
Carbon dioxide sequestration and its long-term immobilisation in biomass is recently an extremely significant problem. Its greatest reserves occur in forests growing all over the globe. A human being, through their conscious action, ought to affect, among other things, the amount of carbon dioxide discharged into the atmosphere and its rational management. Here, quite a good solution seems to be the immobilisation of CO2 in biomass of plants, and in particular, in trees, characterised by their longevity, which are used most frequently for that purpose.
Such carbon dioxide management allows for its several-decade immobilisation within living plants, while a further processing of wood mass allows for halting it for consecutive years in products manufactured. Additionally, in the case when within a selected land planted with trees the effluent irrigation is being carried out, simultaneous sewage treatment is also an advantage. By using plants characterised by intense increment in biomass within facilities, also biogens occurring in effluents may be effectively removed.
In the analysed case, sewage treatment consisted in entry of household sewage into a prepared surface which was previously subject to mechanical purification. All the sections were sown with grass mixture and plantings of poplar were used. Observations were made during the period of 17 years. The effluents entered onto the surface of the sections and the effluents outflowing from the facility were subject to a physicochemical analysis in order to determine the operational efficiency of a plant - soil treatment system. Also, a threefold inventory of a forest stand was made in order to determine the increment in trees.
The last inventory was made in 2014. Based on dendrological characteristics, the average volume of wood mass obtained from the land irrigated with effluents was assessed.
A rational management of effluents on the grounds without any central drainage allows for a parallel solution to some problems. First of all, purification of effluents in a natural environment by closing the matter cycle, and additionally contributing to the limitation of carbon dioxide emission by its halting in plant biomass.
The European Water Framework Directive can have enormous consequences for agricul-ture in the Netherlands. In parts of the country agriculture should be taken out of production because the nutrient loads to the surface water system are far too high. This doom scenario is of course unde-sired and a number of source-specific and effect-specific measures are necessary. The fate of nutri-ents in the soil is strongly interrelated with its hydrology. Directly, because nutrients are transported by water and the distribution of the residence time of drainage water is a good measure for the time behaviour of the nutrient loads to the surface water system. Longer residence time in the soil means more of nutrients applied by farmers but also a longer recovery period, after applying source-specific measures. In this paper three promising effect-specific hydrological measures are described buffer strips, retention strips, and controlled drainage.
Wetlands play a significant role in agricultural landscape. They are the areas of exception-ally great natural values able to regulate water cycling in river catchments. In many cases they are the basic food source for bred animals.
Large areas of wetlands (c. 4 million ha) have been drained for agricultural purposes in Poland. Nevertheless, there are still numerous natural (or close to natural) wetlands, part of which is protected in nature reserves or national parks.
Having in mind the transformation of agriculture and the need of protecting water resources and natural environment, it is necessary to regulate the principles of utilisation and management of re-claimed wetlands. Water management should be adjusted to the type of an area and to environmental requirements. Regardless of the type and intensity of agricultural use of wetlands one has to aim at limiting rapid outflow of spring thaw and rainfall waters which means the reconstruction and increas-ing of natural retention capacity of the river catchment. It is necessary to provide an appropriate num-ber of water lifting facilities and their proper exploitation in land reclamation objects.
It is as well necessary to create appropriate organizational, legal and financial conditions stimu-lating actions to improve water balance and wetland protection.
The paper deals with calibration of the simulation models of hydraulic part of an irrigation project. Calibrated simulation model can be used in design, reconstruction, enlargement or maintenance of the pressurized irrigation systems. Computer model of the water distribution system is a valuable tool which can assist engineers and planners in analyzing the hydraulic performance of water delivery systems. Calibration of the water distribution model consists in comparison of pressures and flows predicted with observed pressures and flows for known operating conditions (i.e., pump operation, tank levels, pressure-reducing valve settings), and adjustment of the input data for the model to improve agreement between observed and predicted values. In practice, given a set or sets of measured state variables, engineers apply trial and error techniques with their judgment to vary the parameters and accomplish this task. Trial and error techniques are tedious do not guarantee reasonable results. The paper introduces the methodology of determination of calibrated parameters automatically. Described methodology of calibration is based on optimizing procedures using the harmony search approach.