Drainage water use options for a regional irrigation system

Abstract

The use of saline drainage water for irrigation is a management practice that results in fresh water savings and also addresses the problem of drainage water disposal. However, environmental and economic restrictions need to be considered in order to design a sustainable system. An optimisation routine is proposed here that aims to estimate the quantities of drainage water that could be used for irrigation. The proposed routine incorporates crop–water production functions to simulate a crop's performance under a saline environment. The area of implementation was the regional irrigation network of Agoulinitsa in western Greece, a coastal region with a shallow aquifer. Scenarios under different prices of fresh water and salinity values of drainage water were examined.

Applying Factor Analysis and the CCME Water Quality Index for Assessing Groundwater Quality of an Aegean Island (Rhodes, Greece)

“…The topic of water quality is broad and comprehensive [1,[12][13][14][15]. Gradual deterioration of water quality is one of the primary impacts of agricultural, industrial, and household expansion and other land use changes [2,4,13,16]. Well-structured planning of water resources is essential for protecting water quality and assessing and managing groundwater and surface water contamination.…”

Editorial

“…The study by Gotsis et al (2015) provides an optimisation tool that will encourage the re-use of saline drainage water for the irrigation of certain crops and so reduce the pressure on local freshwater sources. This type of study provides evidence of the conditions required for water managers to change their practice.…”