Use of Shallow Groundwater in Sprinkler Irrigation (Case Study)

Abstract

The study area is located in the desert region west of the road to Karbala-Najaf cities. The unconfined Al-Dibdibba aquifer in this area is considered as a source of water. Recently, the project of the city of Al-Imam Al-Hussein farm has been established in this area which depends on the groundwater for irrigation. The general direction of ground water in the aquifer is from the west and the south west towards the east and the northeast. The storage of the aquifer is about 46.8 Million m3. Two different sites were selected; the first site is the front field which includes 4 wells, while the second site is the back field which includes 20 wells. Basins have been suggested to be constructed with a volume of 3000 m3 for each one of farms A and B in the back field and a volume of 1500 m3 for farm C in the front field. The results of electrical conductivity-EC of ground water-GW samples indicate that are suitable for wheat, barley, maize, and sugar beet. Simulation models have been used at two phases in this research with an area of 51 donums for the back field and 33 donums for farm C in the front field. The first phase is to find crop water requirement and irrigation requirements for wheat and barley as a winter crops and maize and sugarbeet as a summer crops using CROPWAT8.0 simulation model, while the second phase includes irrigation network design using EPANET2.0 simulation model. This study has revealed that the final designed semi-permanent sprinkler system capacity in this research is 321m3/hr to irrigate area of 51 donum, within 4 days of 7 hours per day for the back field. Thus, the application of sprinkler irrigation will assist in the increase of cultivation by about 2.5 times. Also, results from simulation showed that the operation time of wells has been reduced about 40%. Crop yield produced by donum for each crop was increased by about 50%.