Soil variability in La Violada Irrigation District (Spain): II Characterizing hydrologic and salinity features
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Date
2017
Authors
Jiménez Aguirre, María TeresaIsidoro Ramírez, Daniel
Usón Murillo, Asunción
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Abstract
The recent modernization of 1.1 Mha of irrigated land in Spain calls for the evaluation of these transformations
in terms of environmental impact and resource use efficiency. The available data for this evaluation has
increased with the transformation (better, digital and spatially distributed data) allowing for the use of
distributed soil water and solute movement models. But most hydrological models require soil hydrologic
properties that are costly and time-consuming to gather and soil information in Spain is generally scarce. This
paper focuses in analyzing the soil hydrologic features in La Violada Irrigation District (VID; a 5234 ha semi-arid
irrigated area recently modernized in northeast Spain) usable in soil water models for the evaluation of the new
irrigation system.
The recent soil map of the VID (presented in a companion paper) gathered the hydrologic and salinity
properties of the horizons in the described soil units. The hydraulic conductivity (Ks) of the horizons was also
assessed by the inverse auger-hole method. From these data, the VID was disaggregated in three homogeneous
units according to their hydrologic features and Pedotransfer Functions (PTFs) were built for the whole VID
(General Model) and separately for the homogeneous soil units (Distributed Model). These PTFs allowed for
obtaining field capacity (FC) and wilting point (WP) from texture and organic matter, while Ks depended upon
texture and gypsum content.
Apparently, there were no salinity issues in VID soils due to irrigation. The high Ca2+ and Mg2+ levels in the
saturation extract resulted in generally low SAR, what along with the high gypsum and carbonate contents may
help to prevent soil degradation by sodicity.
As a result, the homogeneous hydrologic zones defined in VID may be used to recommend specific irrigation
practices and as the basis for the application of distributed soil water movement models. These hydrologic
properties may be applied directly as inputs to the models while the PTFs may allow for setting adequate
parameters in nearby areas with similar soils from more readily available soil information (texture, organic
matter and gypsum).
Description
Keywords
Pedotransfer Functions, Available Water Content, Hydraulic conductivity, Soil water balances, Salinity
Bibliographic citation
Geoderma, in press
AGROVOC subjects
Conductividad hidráulicaSalinidad
Balance hídrico del suelo
Riego
Other field subjects
Suelos y riegosSponsorship
This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Innovation through the research grants AGL2010-21681-C03-03 and AGL2013-48728-C2-2-R and by the Ebro River Basin Authority through a collaboration protocol. Thanks are given to the Almudévar Water User Association and the Ebro River Basin Administration for their support.