Using a furrow system for surface drainage under unsteady rain

• Published in: Agricultural water management Vol. 96; no. 7; pp. 1128 - 1136
• Main Authors: Taky, A., Mailhol, J.C., Belaud, G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.07.2009; Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier; Elsevier; Elsevier Masson
• Series: Agricultural Water Management
• Subjects: Agricultural and forest climatology and meteorology. Irrigation. Drainage; agricultural runoff; Agronomy. Soil science and plant productions; Biological and medical sciences; clay soils; drainage; Environmental Sciences; equations; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; furrow irrigation; Furrow system; furrows; General agronomy. Plant production; hydrologic models; infiltration (hydrology); Kinematic wave model; Overland flow; prediction; rain; Runoff; Runoff Furrow system Unsteady rainfall Overland flow Kinematic wave model; Unsteady rainfall; winter; Morocco; Unsteady rainfall; Kinematic wave model; Overland flow; Furrow system; Runoff; Meteorological phenomenon; Use; Runoff water; Modeling; System; Drainage; Rain; Kinematics; Water engineering; Models; Atmospheric precipitation; MODELISATION; DRAINAGE AGRICOLE; IRRIGATION A LA RAIE; PLUIE
• ISSN: 0378-3774; 1873-2283
• DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2009.02.014

Water excess during winter limits crop development on heavy clay soil conditions of the Gharb valley (Morocco). The furrow system to eliminate these negative effects is the adopted solution. This article focuses on the development of a water transfer model through a furrow system during unsteady rainfall event to evaluate the runoff volume resulting from a reference rainy event. This model contains a production function associated to a transfer function. The production function is based on the Green–Ampt infiltration equation. The latter has been adapted to account for unsteady rain conditions and rainfall intermittence. The transfer function is based on the kinematic wave model, the explicit solution of which is coupled with the water excess generated by the production function. Simulated runoff in the furrows is collected by a drainage ditch evacuating the flow outside a plot of 1.3 ha. The similarity between parameters of a furrow irrigation model and those of the production function is advantageously used for model calibration. The proposed modelling approach shows capabilities to predict water amount and peak discharges evacuated from a plot of around 1 ha by a furrow system under unsteady rainfall events. As an application, it is used to evaluate the ability of the surface drainage system to evacuate the excessive volumes of water under typical rainfalls.