Reducing Groundwater Overexploitation with Improving Operational Performances of Irrigation Canal

Abstract

Nearly 90 percent of global groundwater supported irrigated areas are those that have conjunctive use of both surface and groundwater. A major driver behind the use of groundwater in these regions, beside surface water availability issue, is the poor operational performance of the surface irrigation schemes. Therefore, they intensively extract water and continuously deteriorate the aquifers. The current study focuses on six main irrigation districts that are located in Zayandeh-Rud River Basin (ZRB), in the central part of Iran, where a total area of 200,000 hectares is irrigated using surface water in conjunction with groundwater. To improve the performance of the irrigation networks for each of these districts, three operational model alternatives including fully automated systems were incorporate. Each of these models is designed and run for each of the six districts separately. The results of this study point to 15% to 25% reduction in operational water losses depending on the alternatives. These potentially reduced water losses are then available to be used in the agricultural sector that can result in reducing the groundwater extraction up to 300 (Million Cubic Meters (MCM).