Field measurements based model for surface irrigation efficiency assessment

Within scenarios of water scarcity, the irrigation efficiency plays an increasingly strategic role. In this paper, a method that uses an advance-infiltration model based on four field measurements and the soil particle size distribution is proposed to estimate border-irrigation efficiencies. This method was applied to fifteen irrigation events and the application, storage and distribution efficiencies were estimated. The advance-infiltration model was validated against soil moisture measurements. The field-scale saturated hydraulic conductivity was estimated by model fitting to the measured depth of water infiltration. The sensitivity of the modelled irrigation efficiency to the operational surface irrigation parameters was evaluated by simulating seven irrigation scenarios based on field-collected data.

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