Field measurements based model for surface irrigation efficiency assessment

Within scenarios of water scarcity, the irrigation efficiency plays an increasingly strategic role. In thispaper, a method that uses an advance-infiltration model based on four field measurements and the soilparticle size distribution is proposed to estimate border-irrigation efficiencies. This method was appliedto fifteen irrigation events and the application, storage and distribution efficiencies were estimated. Theadvance-infiltration model was validated against soil moisture measurements. The field-scale saturatedhydraulic conductivity was estimated by model fitting to the measured depth of water infiltration. Thesensitivity of the modelled irrigation efficiency to the operational surface irrigation parameters wasevaluated by simulating seven irrigation scenarios based on field-collected data.The infiltration profiles obtained by the proposed method were in agreement with the soil mois-ture measurements. The maximum difference between simulated and measured infiltration depth was0.018 m. The field-scale saturated hydraulic conductivity values were in agreement with the infiltrom-eter tests results. The analysis of both simulated scenarios and monitored irrigation events highlightedthe need for farmers to reduce the flow rates and increase the duration of irrigation events, in order toimprove the irrigation efficiencies.