Conservation tillage has significant potential as a water management tool for cotton production on sandy, drought-prone soils. Plant residue remaining at the soil surface from prior crops serves as a vapor barrier against water loss, reduces raindrop impact energy, slows surface runoff, and often increases infiltration. By increasing infiltration, the potential for greater plant-available water...

Olive mill wastewater (OMW) produced from small units scattered in rural areas of Southern Europe is a major source of pollution of surface and subsurface water. In the present work, a treatment scheme based on physical separation methods is presented. The investigation was carried out using a pilot-plant unit equipped with ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis membranes. Approxi...

Although rainfall in the United States Mid-South is sufficient to produce corn (Zea mays L.) without irrigation in most years, timely irrigation has been shown to increase yields. The recent interest in ethanol fuels is expected to lead to increases in US corn production, and subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) is one possible way to increase application efficiency and thereby reduce water use. Th...

global warming, as a consequence of greenhouse gases accumulation, has exerted significant impacts on biosphere. methane, a product of reduction processes of organic carbon in anaerobic conditions, is mainly emitted from paddy fields. the aim followed in this research is to evaluate the impact of midseason drainage on methane emission from paddy fields. the research was conducted with three tre...

Three models were evaluated for their accuracy in simulating pesticide runoff at the edge of agricultural fields: Pesticide Root Zone Model (PRZM), Root Zone Water Quality Model (RZWQM), and OpusCZ. Modeling results on runoff volume, sediment erosion, and pesticide loss were compared with measurements taken from field studies. Models were also compared on their theoretical foundations and ease ...

Multi-objective optimization was used to calibrate a regional surface water-groundwater model of the Yaqui Valley, a 6800 km2 irrigated agricultural region located along the Sea of Cortez in Sonora, Mexico. The model simulates three-dimensional groundwater flow coupled to onedimensional surface water flow in the irrigation canals. It accounts for the spatial distribution of annual recharge from...

The determination of water application parameters for creating an optimal soil moisture profile represents a complex nonlinear optimization problem which renders traditional optimization into a cumbersome procedure. For this reason, an alternative methodology is proposed which combines a numerical subsurface flow model and artificial neural networks ~ANN! for solving the problem in two, fully s...

Subsurface drip irrigation success depends on surpassing the backpressure obstacle, a phenomenon which occurs when water application intensity exceeds infiltration rate of soil, reduces emitter flow rate. Thus, this study aimed to determine variation, in relation surface flow, four emitters buried at two depths loam soil (Yolo Loam soil), and generated by subsurface condition. The cavity radius...