Cyclic Irrigation for Reducing Nutrients and Suspended Solids Loadings from Paddy Fields in Japan

Abstract

The reduction of pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, organic matter, and suspended solids discharged from non-point sources is an important aspect of improving water quality of downstream water areas (Reinelt et al., 1992; Gunes, 2008; Collins et al., 2010). Paddy fields, which produce rice as staple food in many countries, especially in the Asian monsoon region, and use large amounts of water during the rice growing season, are a major non-point source of pollution. Various environmental measures to reduce effluent load such as the reduction of chemical fertilizer (field-scale practices) (e.g., Choi & Nelson, 1996; Fan & Li, 2010) and reuse of drainage water (district-scale practices), are applied in paddy-field districts. Cyclic irrigation (reuse of drainage water as irrigation water) is considered an effective water management practice for saving irrigation water resources and reducing effluent load from a paddy-field district. Cyclic irrigation was originally developed as a method for saving water in low-lying paddy fields (Kudo et al., 1995; Takeda et al., 1997) or terraced paddy fields (Tabuchi, 1986; Nakamura et al., 1998), where a stable and sufficient water source was not available. In a cyclic irrigation system, drainage water discharged from the paddy field is partially reused as irrigation water, so that the actual downstream effluent volume is decreased. Cyclic irrigation is also expected to decrease pollutant loads both because less water leaves the district and because some of the pollutants in the drainage water will be returned to the paddy field. Kubota et al. (1979) reported that cyclic irrigation with a recycling ratio (the ratio of reused water to drainage water) of 34% reduced nitrogen loads by 29% and phosphorus loads by 37%. In addition, cyclic irrigation system may increase the hydraulic retention time of nutrients in the paddy field and thereby enhance the purity of water leaving the field (Takeda et al., 1997; Feng et al., 2004, 2005; Takeda & Fukushima, 2006). It has been also reported that the ability of cyclic irrigation to reduce loads of nutrients is directly proportional to the amount of reused water (Kaneki et al., 2003) and the recycling ratio (Hasegawa et al., 1982; Shiratani et al., 2004; Hitomi et al., 2006). However, the cyclic irrigation ratio, that is defined as the ratio of reused water to irrigation water, in paddy-field districts that have upstream areas is limited to low values due to large amount of uncontrollable inflow of water to the districts. Especially in paddy-field districts that capture industrial or domestic wastewater from upstream areas, irrigation water must have