Salt Distribution in a Soil Irrigated by Subsurface Emitter

Abstract

The best design of subsurface trickle irrigation systems requires knowledge of water and salt distribution patterns around the emitters that match the root extraction and minimize water losses. The transient distribution of water and salt in a two-dimensional homogeneous Iraqi soil domain under subsurface trickle irrigation with different settings of an emitter is investigated numerically using 2D-HYDRUS software. Three types of Iraqi soil were selected. The effect of altering different values of water application rate and initial soil water content was investigated in the developed model. The coefficient of correlation (R²) and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) was used to validate the predicted numerical result. This statistical analysis revealed that there was no much difference between the predicted numerical results, and the measured values. R² varied from 0.75 to 0.93 and the (RMSE) from 0.079 to 0.116. The comparison confirms the accuracy of the developed model, and it shows that it can be used to simulate the front wetting patterns of water and salt distribution under subsurface trickle irrigation systems. The simulation outcome showed that as the distance from the emitter increased, soil salinity far from the emitter decreased. As expected, irrigation duration and amount affects the dimension of the solute distribution.