Hamed Ebrahimian

University of Tehran | UT · Department of Irrigation and Reclamation Engineering

In this chapter, we introduce and describe various techniques and approaches for water and irrigation management to increase water productivity in semiarid and arid lands, thereby promoting sustainable agriculture. Significant reductions in water losses can be achieved by modifying the inflow rate and field dimensions in surface irrigation. Irrigat...

This research aimed to ascertain the Manning roughness coefficient (n) and explore the impact of various factors on it across different phases and irrigation events. The Manning's n for furrow irrigation was determined in the advance, storage, and whole irrigation phases utilizing the SIPAR_ID model, Manning equation, and WinSRFR software, respecti...

Background and objectives: Modern intensive agriculture has boosted crop yields through chemical inputs. However, this approach has caused decreased biodiversity, harm to human health, and environmental degradation. Developing sustainable agricultural practices that increase productivity while minimizing negative effects, especially in arid and sem...

The necessity of employing deficit irrigation methods has become inevitable due to water scarcity in numerous regions globally. This study aims to improve the efficiency of border irrigation under deficit irrigation by determining the optimal cutoff time (Tco). For this purpose, 1024 simulations (various combinations of input data, including physic...

New technologies and innovations can improve water management in agriculture. Data science and machine learning are emerging technologies. Data science is a growing field in the world of technology that helps analyze, extract information, and understand patterns and relationships in big data. It plays a pivotal role in a wide range of industries, i...

Lowland rice flooding, while consuming considerable water, has adverse environmental effects, including releasing methane into the atmosphere, aggravating climate change. Several drawbacks can be attributed to water-saving alternatives, such as aerobic rice, whereas rice drip irrigation techniques have been evaluated primarily under aerobic conditi...

Effective drainage is a crucial factor in paddy fields, especially in regions with waterlogging or heavy clay soils. Identifying an effective drainage system is essential for the successful removal of excess soil water from paddy fields to prepare them for subsequent crops. This study aimed to evaluate three different drainage systems, shallow surf...

The knowledge about soil hydraulic properties (i.e., water retention and hydraulic conductivity characteristics) is of relevance for accurate determination of land surface fluxes. Yet, the laborious and time-consuming process of measuring the soil water retention curve (SWRC) with conventional laboratory methods poses a challenge. In addition, the...

Accurate estimation of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity, K(Sw), is crucial for modeling water and solute transport in variably-saturated soils. In this study, a new model for the estimation of K(Sw) based on percolation theory and critical path analysis is presented, in which the pore-throat size distribution is described by the three- parameter...

In this study, the water-food-energy nexus in the Lake Urmia basin was investigated to establish a balance between water and energy consumption, aiming to protect the environment and ensure food security. The research was conducted on 17 farms located in different parts of the Lake Urmia basin, encompassing the predominant crops in the region as we...

So far, many studies have examined the effects of surface (FF) and drip (DF) fertigation compared to surface (FC) and drip (DC) irrigation along with fertilization at different levels of fertilizer on crop yield indices, nutrient use efficiency (NUE), and irrigation water productivity (WP); however, each of them have been conducted under different...

The soil water retention curve (SWRC) is an essential soil property that relates soil water content and matric potential. It plays a crucial role in soil water dynamics and the understanding of various hydrological phenomena at the land surface, including infiltration, runoff, evaporation, and energy exchange processes. In recent years, proximal se...

Estimating soil infiltration is important in designing and managing surface irrigation systems. To date, various methods have been proposed to estimate infiltration coefficients. In this research, a simple method for estimating the coefficients of the Kostiakov–Lewis infiltration equation in surface irrigation is presented. Then, the performance of...

In drylands, poor rains combined with high evaporation rates increase the risks of soil salinization in addition to drought stress. Here, we determined the values of the parameters in the Feddes root water uptake function for sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) under drought and salinity stresses in a pot experiment using "Lebap-55", which has been bred fo...

Low efficiency of irrigation is a major problem with surface irrigation methods, mainly due to poor management and improper design. The objective of this study was to evaluate and improve the performance of different surge and alternate furrow irrigation methods. A field experiment was conducted during the grain maize growing season in the Jayedar...

The use of deficit irrigation technique has become inevitable due to the lack of water resources in many parts of the world. The goal of this study is to improve the performance of border irrigation under deficit strategy by determining the optimal cutoff time (T co ). For this purpose, field experiments and simulation modeling were carried out. Th...

Soil hydraulic properties, including soil water retention, control various terrestrial hydrological processes such as infiltration, runoff, and evapotranspiration. Measuring and monitoring these properties at large scales is challenging. Therefore, over the past decade, remote sensing has been investigated as a promising tool for large-scale mappin...

The proper use of domestic wastewater in agriculture sustains freshwater resources and reduces the need of chemical fertilizers. The objective of this study was to modeling of soil nitrogen dynamics and crop uptake under untreated wastewater application for irrigation taking soil nitrogen cycle into account. A two-dimensional numerical model, HYDRU...

Surface irrigation models should take two‐dimensional infiltration of water in furrows into account for better representation and more accuracy. The Warrick–Lazarovitch infiltration model (W–L model) has been proposed to estimate the two‐dimensional infiltration of water in furrow irrigation. This model consists of several parameters, including γ a...

With the increasing limitation of water resources and high water demand of the agricultural crops, the importance of unconventional water and its ability to be used in agriculture is very important. Recently, the use of municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent as an unconventional source of water and a sustainable source of water for irrigatio...

With the increase in the volume of municipal wastewater and due to the upcoming droughts and lack of water resources, increasing water use efficiency and reuse of municipal wastewater is inevitable. In this study, the use of effluent of Hashtgerd city wastewater treatment in peach tree irrigation was investigated. Soil sampling was performed eight...

The suspension of eroded soil in surface runoff ultimately leads to the transfer of nutrients to land and water resources. Placing soil or straw (as a barrier) inside irrigated furrows in order to reduce water flow velocity, as a traditional local practice, has not been investigated from the environmental point of view. In this research, the effect...

This paper aims for evaluating the border irrigation performance sensitivity including application efficiency, advance time, runoff and deep infiltration ratios to the variation of soil texture, land use, discharge, border length and soil moisture. The measurement of infiltration was done by the double-ring method in five soil texture classes and t...

The Kostiakov–Lewis equation is one of the commonly used infiltration equations in furrow irrigation. Elliott and Walker developed a two-point method to estimate coefficients of the Kostiakov–Lewis equation. The basic infiltration rate (fo) in the Kostiakov–Lewis equation is usually calculated by the inflow–outflow method to determine the other two...

One of the common irrigation systems in the paddy fields is field-to-field irrigation. The management of these irrigation systems is difficult and essential because of the water scarcity. Estimating the parameters affecting the water balance in paddy fields is necessary by considering the irrigation requirements of downstream fields. The objective...

Nitrogen nutrition index (NNI) is determined by using costly and time-consuming sampling methods during the growing season. The present study primarily aims to estimate NNI during the growing season of maize. Dry matter (W) and nitrogen uptake (Nu) during the growth period were estimated by AquaCrop and HYDRUS-2D models, respectively, as the two ke...

A significant part of water consumption in greenhouses is related to the processes of evapotranspiration and cooling of the greenhouse. A large amount of water consumption in greenhouses is not used and in the form humid air is directed outside by the exhaust fans, which can be recycled by a heat exchanger and reused by the condensation process. It...

The use of plastic mulch in furrow irrigation increases irrigation efficiency and improves crop yield. In this study, the effect of the placement of plastic mulch on the furrows and/or on the ridges on reducing water loss and nitrate leaching for furrow-fertigated maize was investigated. Field experiments were carried out including four different t...

In spite of the importance of increasing water shortages in most pomegranate production regions, there is not sufficient information about the water requirement and crop coefficients ( K c ) of pomegranate trees under various conditions (e.g., plant cultivar and age and irrigation system). The aim of this study was to measure evapotranspiration dur...

The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility of using lead contaminated water in surface irrigation and subirrigation and its effect on silage maize yield. In this regard, lysimeter experiments were conducted in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran in 2017 in the form of factorial experiment in a comple...

Proximal and remote sensing techniques in the optical domain are cost-effective alternatives to standard soil property characterization methods. However, the extent of light penetration into the soil sample, also termed soil information depth, is not well understood. In this study a new analytical model that links the particle size distribution and...

One of the common irrigation systems in the paddy fields is field-to-field irrigation. The management of these irrigation systems is difficult and essential because of the water scarcity. Estimating the parameters affecting the water balance in paddy fields is necessary by considering the irrigation requirements of downstream fields. The objective...

About 90 percent of the water used in greenhouses is allocated to the two processes of evapotranspiration and cooling of the environment. A large amount of water used in greenhouses is driven out useless in the form of humid air by the fan, which is recyclable and can be reused in the greenhouse water inlet cycle by condensation. Therefore, the pur...

ncreasing water productivity is as a necessity in agriculture sector regarding this sector is the largest consumer of water in Iran. Because of higher irrigation efficiency, in particular, the reduction of losses of deep penetration and evaporation from the soil surface, drip-tape system is a good option for irrigation. Additionally, using varietie...

Studies have shown that irrigation efficiency is low in Iran and Khuzestan province. However, it is important to increase irrigation efficiency and reduce irrigation water losses in the field according to the situation of the country's water resources. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of furrow irrigation in the fields...

The objective of this study was to assess the different scenarios for improving the irrigation application efficiency of a two‐row bed furrow irrigation system (wide furrow) using the SIRMOD model in six sugar beet fields of the Moghan plain for the 2015–2016 growing season. The Moghan plain is situated in the Ardebil province of Iran. Therefore, f...

Accurate determination of temporal variability in infiltration parameters and Manning's roughness coefficient is essential for appropriate design of surface irrigation systems to improve irrigation performance and reduce water losses. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of temporal variability and different inflow rates on infil...

Inverse modeling is a relatively complex procedure that allows quick estimation of soil hydraulic properties, yielding parameters for both soil water retention and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity function from a single experiment. The purpose of this research was to evaluate saline water effect on unsaturated hydraulic properties of clay loamy n...

Optimization of water use with consideration of salinity control is a crucial task for crop production. A new scheme, "optimized irrigation", was recently presented to determine irrigation depth using WASH_1D/2D which are numerical simulation models of water flow and solute transport in soils and crop growth. In the scheme, irrigation depth is dete...

Estimation of canopy cover (CC) can be replaced with measurement of dry matter (DM) during the growing season, which leads to saving cost and time. A variety of software programs, such as Canopeo, have recently been launched for estimating CC by processing digital images. The main objective of the present study was to validate whether the CC estima...

Many applications involving water flow and solute transport in the vadose zone require unsaturated soil hydraulic properties. Direct methods for measuring hydraulic properties are often costly and time consuming. Inverse modeling approach uses information from easily measured data to estimate soil properties which are usually difficult to obtain. T...

Surface irrigation, particularly furrow irrigation, is the most common method of water application into agricultural lands. Despite all its advantages, furrow irrigation has some demerits, such as a potential large volume of runoff losses. In this research, an approach was proposed to reduce runoff losses and to improve water flow characteristics b...

Efficiency is one of the most important assessment indicators in irrigation systems. Classical efficiency (CE) is not an exact index due to the lack of consideration of the return flows. Therefore, the neoclassical concepts of the efficiency are considered to take a part of losses of irrigation water as a return flow into account. Quality of the re...

Aqua-agriculture reservoirs have been used as one of the main resources for supplying water to paddy fields, particularly under water shortage conditions. In this study, a simulation–optimization model for conjunctive use of irrigation canals and aqua-agriculture reservoir was developed in order to maximize rainwater harvesting while minimizing wat...

In this research, to evaluate the Zero inertia model in SIRMOD and WinSRFR software, data from the advance time, recession time and runoff volume were obtained from conventional furrow irrigation (CFI), fixed alternative furrow irrigation (FFI) and alternate furrow irrigation (AFI). The simulation results were used with the help of the relative err...

Accurate estimation of infiltration coefficients in surface irrigation is essential for proper design, reducing water losses, preventing erosion and increasing water use efficiency. This study was conducted to evaluate various methods for estimating the coefficients of infiltration equations. We have selected 17 different methods with better perfor...

If furrow irrigation is properly designed and implemented, this method would be one of the best surface irrigation systems. To achieve high irrigation efficiency and uniformity in surface irrigation, the use of simulation models is inevitable. The purpose of this study was to develop a seasonal furrow irrigation model to simulate the whole irrigati...

A sub-irrigated planter (SIP) is a container irrigation technique in which water is supplied to the crop from the bottom, stored in a saturated media-filled reservoir beneath an unsaturated soil, and then delivered by capillary action to the root zone. The aim of this study was to optimize the water management and to assess the performance of this...

AquaCrop applies an automatic calibration procedure through semiquantitative approach to determine degree of soil fertility stress on crop production and water productivity. The objective of this study was to assess this capability of AquaCrop to simulate maize grain yield and biomass production, canopy cover and soil water content in the root zone...

Accurate design, suitable management, and optimization of irrigation design parameters play an important role in increasing the performance of furrow irrigation. The main objective of this study was to optimize the performance of furrow irrigation using WinSRFR in the fields of Salman Farsi Agro Industry sugarcane, located in the southwest of Iran....

Saline-sodic soils commonly display a poor soil structure which is associated with the reduction in soil quality. Therefore, optimal management of soil and water salinity in saline-sodic soils should be regarded as an important factor in sustainable agriculture. The main purpose of the current study was to address the combined effect of irrigation...

The main objective of this study was to investigate the sensitivity of the output parameters of SIRMOD software relative to initial soil water content. The treatments consisted of three irrigation water qualities, two types of soil water content management (FC and 30% FC; FC is field capacity) and three irrigation events. The HYDRUS‐1D software was...

Simulation of nitrogen (N) uptake during crop growing season is very practical in improving fertilizer management and environmental protection. It is very valuable to have a tool which can perform this simulation in a reliable way. HYDRUS-2D model has widely been used to predict the water flow and fate of nutrients in soil. However, no specific res...

Full irrigation is recommended for the regions with no limitation to access water for irrigating the farm lands. Due to the population increase and consequently, the increase in cultivation field’s area, the climate changes etc., full irrigation is not possible in many regions. Under this condition, using the water management techniques, such as de...

Due to the time and spatial limitations of subsurface drainage pilots, simulation models have been extensively applied for evaluating these systems. Since the accuracy of simulation models depends enormously on the accuracy of model parameters, this study aims to develop an inverse modeling approach for estimating most influential soil hydraulic an...

Manning’s roughness coefficient is one of the most important parameters in the design and evaluation of surface irrigation. In this study, Manning’s roughness coefficient was evaluated under two different inflow discharges (i.e., 0.29 and 0.44 L s− 1) on vegetated furrow irrigation during maize growing season. In addition, the accuracy of multileve...

Lake Urmia in Iran has faced extreme water loss in recent years due to overuse and mismanagement of water resources, particularly in agriculture. In this study, three strategies including irrigation depth reduction, changing planting dates and crop rotation in crop patterns of Urmia city were assessed for improvement of water productivity to mitiga...

A fundamental and widely applied concept used to study surface flow processes is the advance-time curve characterized by an empirical power law with an exponent r and a numerical prefactor p (i.e., x = p*t^r). In the literature, different values of r have been reported for various situations and types of surface irrigation. Invoking concepts from p...

A fundamental and widely applied concept used to study surface flow processes is the advance-time curve characterized by an empirical power law with an exponent r and a numerical prefactor p (i.e., x = p*t^r). In the literature, different values of r have been reported for various situations and types of surface irrigation. Invoking concepts from p...

To Increase irrigation efficiency in furrow irrigation, adequate understanding about the effect of different initial and boundary conditions on total and lateral infiltration is required. The main purpose of this research was field study on two-dimensional infiltration and edge effect in furrow irrigation. For this purpose, 24 infiltration tests we...

The aim of this study is to present an inverse modelling approach with a genetic algorithm for estimating soil hydraulic and solute transport parameters in two subsurface drainage systems in Iran. In this study, measured data were obtained from Amirkabir and Shoaybiyeh sugarcane fields equipped with subsurface drainage systems. The SWAP model was u...

A field study was conducted to evaluate the effect of two‐dimensional infiltration on management of conventional furrow irrigation (CFI) and alternate furrow irrigation (AFI). For this purpose, 48 infiltration tests were carried out in CFI and AFI under two different irrigation intervals (4 and 9 days) with two different water heads (5 and 10 cm)....

Introduction: Water scarcity is an important challenge worldwide, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Water-scarce countries will have to rely more on the use of non-conventional water resources to partly alleviate water scarcity. The reuse of wastewater for irrigation is considered to be beneficial for crop production, and due to its nitroge...

Paddy fields have the ability of multi-cultivation as compared to other crops. Low permeability rate and long term waterlogging of paddy soils cause serious problems for non-rice crops. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate three different drainage methods including: 1-surface drainage, 2-subsurface pipe drainage and 3-trench drainage (fi...

Abstract The parameters of infiltration equations have a key role to evaluate and design irrigation systems. Therefore, in order to enhance irrigation efficiency, it is necessary that these parameters to be estimated precisely. In this study, four inverse estimation methods to predict the coefficients of infiltration equation including two-point me...

Use of saline water for irrigation is a strategy to mitigate water shortage. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of the cyclic and constant use of saline and non-saline water on drip irrigated maize yield and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE). Nine field treatments were laid out based on alternative irrigation management...

Water resources limitation, drought and reduction in water quality will face food productions with many problems. The use of saline water for irrigation of crops is a strategy of irrigation water management. In this study, the cyclic use of saline and non-saline water was investigated. Field experiments were carried out in randomized complete block...

Using simulation models is a strategy in agricultural water use management and an effective way in predicting effect of irrigation management and water quality on crop yield provided that the accuracy of the models is proved. In this study, three different models, i.e. AquaCrop, SALTMED and SWAP, were evaluated under application of the frequency of...