Journal Article

Study the Impact of Soil Texture on Subsurface Trickle Irrigation Shifting towards Sustainable Sources

Mushab, Fatima Sadoon, Rasheed, Zena K., Ameen, Ameen Mohammed Salih

2025

Overview

One of the most effective systems for managing water is subsurface trickle irrigation. Finding empirical formulas and studying the effect of soil texture are the main purposes of this paper. In order to reach an ideal irrigation system as a modern technique to save water, especially in arid regions, soil textures of loam, silt, and silt loam were studied on a subsurface trickle irrigation system by utilizing HYDRUS/2D. The trickle system is usually operated at low pressure, in this paper the used pressure is 30 cm with an emitter buried at 10, 15, and 20 cm at different diameters. Patterns of wetting fronts in both directions at various times depending on soil texture are gathered to find out empirical formulas that are a function of operative time, emitter diameter, depth of buried, and finally, saturated hydraulic conductivity. The statistical parameters make it evident that the formulas provide reasonable prediction accuracy in both dimensions wetted width & depth. The percentage of mean relative error is less than 3%, and the coefficient of determination of both dimensions is more than 0.990. Moreover, the simulation results of this paper are compared with field experiments and based on relative error to find a precise distribution of water around a trickle.

• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Subject: Arid regions / Arid zones / Emitters / Empirical function / Field tests / Hydraulic conductivity / HYDRUS/2D / Irrigation / Irrigation systems / Irrigation water / Loam / Low pressure / Silt / Silt loam / Soil properties / Soil texture / Subsurface trickle irrigation / Texture / Trickle irrigation / Water management / Wet dimensions / Wetting front