Henk Ritzema

Wageningen University & Research | WUR · Water Resources Management group

After completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1970, the Egyptian government undertook an ambitious programme to install drainage on all of Egypt's agricultural lands (approx. 2.7 Mha). In the decades that followed, subsurface drainage was implemented on 2.5 Mha, and drainage practices evolved from manual to large-scale and mechanized. Currently, new or...

A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) conducted in the Al-Mujaylis area, Tihama Coastal Plain, Yemen provided a contribution, as a bottom-up approach, to the assessment of the needs of communities and their views on how to avoid groundwater degradation. It was found that PRA tools could be applied usefully in an area with data scarcity and a cultur...

Irrigation and fertilisation are often over-applied, which exceeds crop requirements. Surface fertigation, a technique of applying pre-dissolved fertilisers together with irrigation water, seems to be a viable way to improve the on-farm performance in the North China Plain (NCP). Thus, we conducted a field experiment based on farmers' practices fro...

p>Surface irrigation worldwide exhibits low efficiency due to excessively deep percolation and runoff. To optimize surface irrigation practice, two questions must be answered simultaneously: when to irrigate and how to irrigate (what stream size to use and for how long) to meet crop water requirements. Current surface irrigation optimization models...

Sustainable production in water-scarce regions entails not to overshoot the sustainable blue water availability (BWA), which in turn requires addressing environmental flow requirements (EFRs). We explored the long-term effects of agricultural development, before (1984–1997) and during (1998–2018) the operation of the modern irrigation and drainage...

Installation of subsurface drainage systems in paddy fields is crucial to achieve the feasibility of year‐round cropping and high productivity and to create more conducive working conditions for the use of farm machinery. Therefore, three subsurface drainage systems were installed in a paddy field located in northern Iran to control the water table...

p>Irrigation and fertilization are vital to increasing crop yield, but their application often exceeds crop requirements. Excessive fertilization under inefficient irrigation depletes the already scarce water resources while contributing to water pollution. To overcome these problems, the introduction of fertigation in combination with modern irrig...

Numerous irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) exhibit excessive sedimentation, resulting in underperformance and high maintenance costs. In the current study, a participatory monitoring program was used to investigate sediment causes and sources, measure the annual sediment load, and monitor desilting campaigns in two small scale irrigati...

Groundwater depletion is a problem in many parts the world. We developed an approach to investigate the drivers of groundwater depletion in data-scarce regions. The approach combines natural and human-induced drivers, with the latter focusing on the link between human activities and government policies. We tested the approach in Wadi Zabid, Yemen....

Freshwater scarcity and soil salinity are amongst the main obstacles for sustainable development of irrigated agriculture, particularly in arid regions. A 2-year field investigation was conducted at an experimental field in south-east Iran during the 2017 and 2018 growing seasons to evaluate the individual and integrated effects of water-saving irr...

Excessive soil erosion hampers the functioning of many irrigation schemes throughout sub-Saharan Africa, increasing management difficulties and operation and maintenance costs. River water is often considered the main source of sedimentation, while overland sediment inflow is overlooked. From 2016 to 2018, participatory research was conducted to as...

Subsurface drains, when installed in non-cohesive soil, are typically covered with an envelope to tackle problems of clogging and siltation. Selecting a suitable envelope material, however, is complicated and depends primarily on soil characteristics in the area where the drains are to be installed. A new promising drainpipe-envelope concept, Hydro...

The DSSAT4.7-CERES model was employed to simulate plant-water nexus conditions in the future of Mazandaran province in Iran, using ensemble outputs of various GCMs and emission scenarios with LARS-WG 5.5 in the time period 2010-2100. The results showed during the 21 st century, maize water requirement is expected to be reduced by 3.3-14.1%. Under c...

Under conditions of water shortage, utilizing unconventional waters, such as treated urban wastewater and/or seawater, in combination with soil amendments such as zeolite, can reduce the harmful effects of drought stress on crop yield. To investigate the agronomic and physiological effects of a mix of water qualities and soil treatments on sorghum,...

Application of common leaching and flushing methods is often impractical due to freshwater scarcity, groundwater pollution and a lack of suitable drainage systems. To address these problems, a pot experiment testing the cultivation of Salicornia persica Akhani was conducted in three replicates. Three saline irrigation treatments (EC = 7.2 dS m−1) w...

Sugarcane farmers in Lumajang in East Java Province have a strong preference of using furrow irrigation instead of sprinkler irrigation. To evaluate the possibility of smallholder sprinkler irrigation as an alternative water-saving irrigation method, the aim of this research is to examine the socio-technical dimension of current irrigation practice...

This study used crop budgets to assess the impact of declining groundwater levels on the economic value of irrigation water in the Wadi Zabid region of Yemen. The study found that returns to land and water were highly sensitive to changes in groundwater depths over time and the free availability of spate water for irrigation. Crops differed in the...

Irrigated agriculture, particularly small-scale irrigation (SSI), is a mainstay for sustainable livelihoods in the developing world. In Ethiopia, SSI sustainability is threatened mainly due to excessive sedimentation. Stakeholders' perceptions of the causes of sedimentation and how they sustain SSI under excessive sedimentation conditions were inve...

A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Simple irrigation schedule Hargreaves CropWat Water productivity Yield and yield component Maize Tigray A B S T R A C T Poor irrigation scheduling practices have been quoted as the major challenges for sustainability of small-scale irrigation schemes in Ethiopia due to complexity of scheduling techniques, cost and in...

Tijdens de extreme zomer van 2018 zijn we gewend geraakt aan nieuwsberichten over grondwater. Maar hoe worden grondwaterstanden eigenlijk gemeten, en hoe worden die metingen verwerkt tot grondwaterkaarten? Dit artikel zet alle gangbare methoden op een rij, inclusief mogelijke foutenbronnen. De resultaten maken duidelijk dat een onafhankelijk valida...

Conventional free subsurface drainage practices in the Moghan Plan, in northwest Iran, result in low irrigation efficiency and excessive volumes of drainage water causing extensive environmental problems. Controlled drainage (CD) is promoted to boost crop yields and reduce subsurface drainage flows and leaching of nutrients. This study was conducte...

Chinese Translation of ILRI publication 60 "Subsurface Drainage Practices Guidelines for the implementation, operation and maintenance of subsurface pipe drainage systems". This handbook focuses on the construction process of subsurface pipe drainage systems. It includes a discussion of planning, organisation, and installation techniques and cont...

On irrigated lands, drainpipe performance is often below standard due to clogging, siltation and root growth inside the pipe. To tackle these problems, an innovative pipe–envelope concept was tested on a 50 ha pilot area in Harran, Turkey, in 2015 and 2016. The new concept, HYDROLUIS, consists of a corrugated inner pipe with three rows of perforati...

Full paper available from: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1XCRtyDvM7sHx Rural areas face major challenges in adapting to the impacts of climate change, in particular to floods and droughts. This calls for both adaptation of rural functions and climate-proof and water-resilient design of the rural area, often implying improvement of water retentio...

In this paper, we analyze the methods that are used in The Netherlands to upscale in-situ groundwater measurements in time and in space, and how the selected combinations of upscaling methods affect the resulting groundwater characteristic. In The Netherlands, a three-step approach is used to obtain groundwater characteristics for a specific area:...

In Iran, as in the rest of the world, land and water for agricultural production is under pressure. Integrating irrigation and drainage management may help sustain intensified agriculture in irrigated paddy fields. This study was aimed to investigate the long-term effects of such management strategies in a newly subsurface drained paddy field in a...

In this paper, a study on the performance of surface irrigation of date palms in a Tunisian arid area (Douz oasis) is presented. The study is conducted in 16 plots with various sizes and soil textures over a 4-year period (2012–2015). In the first step, an assessment of total water requirements of the date palms is carried out. Then, the surface ir...

A participatory rural appraisal (PRA) conducted in the Al-Mujaylis area, Tihama Coastal Plain, Yemen provided a contribution, as a bottom-up approach, to the assessment of the needs of communities and their views on how to avoid groundwater degradation. It was found that PRA tools could be applied usefully in an area with data scarcity and a cultur...

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation for different subsurface drainage systems was tested in an experimental paddy field in Sari, Mazandaran Province, Iran. During two growing seasons in 2014 and 2015, two local rice cultivars (Daylamani and Hashemi) were tested for four combinations of subsurface drainage systems with 15 and 30 m drain sp...

A field trial was carried out in 2013 and 2014 in a research field near Sari (Iran), to study the effect of irrigation with Caspian Sea water on soil salinity, growth parameters and yield components of oleic sunflower. The experiment was conducted with 4 levels of blending viz. 0% (S0) (fresh water), 15% (S15), 30% (S30) and 45% (S45) mix of sea an...

The expected effects of climate change and economic and population growth have motivated the Netherlands government to reformulate its policies on flood protection and water management. Flood protection and drainage are needed to make this low-lying country habitable and suitable for agriculture and other land uses: more than 65% of the Netherlands...

p>On irrigated lands, drainpipe performance is often below standard due to clogging, siltation and root growth inside the pipe. To tackle these problems, an innovative pipe-envelope concept was tested on a 50 ha pilot area in Harran, Turkey, in 2015 and 2016. The new concept, HYDROLUIS, consists of a corrugated inner pipe with three rows of perfora...

The expected effects of climate change and economic and population growth have motivated the Netherlands government to reformulate its policies on flood protection and water management. Flood protection and drainage are needed to make this low-lying country habitable and suitable for agriculture and other land uses: more than 65% of the Netherlands...

Since the attempt to apply the concept of Agropark into Saemangeum agricultural land recently, necessity for adequate funding to develop the concept into reality and which is appropriate to Saemangeum area. However, 11 complex charged in each function are located individually without connections each other in current land use plan of Saemangeum agr...

At present, about 299 Mha (or 18%) of the arable and permanent cropped areas worldwide are irrigated and, although drainage is an important component of irrigation, only 22% of these irrigated lands are drained. As a consequence, salinity and waterlogging problems affect about 10–16% of these areas because the natural drainage is not sufficient for...

In the present era, permanent grasslands and other grazed habitats, i.e., moorlands and heath, are appreciated as avant la lettre green infrastructure (GI) resources, providing a wide range of ecosystem services, the delivery of many of which require water management to be in place. This paper discusses the role of water management and, in particul...

In the framework of the Partners for International Business Program Water Poland – Mazovieckie Region a quick-scan for an integrated development approach for the region north and south of the Vistula River between Warsaw and Plock was conducted. The overall aims of the quick-scan was (i) to further develop the four pilots that have been identified...

"Egypt is a gift of the Nile," wrote Herodotus, and indeed, without the Nile there would be no Egypt as the world knows it. Egypt is mainly dependent on the flow in the Nile River (with an agreed share of 55.5 BCM) and it receives about 1.3 BCM rainfall annually (mainly along the north coast). The overall water use efficiency is already high, due t...

Subsurface drainage is a prerequisite to grow winter crops in the consolidated paddy fields in Northern Iran. A four-year study (2011-2015) was conducted to quantify the effects of subsurface drainage on the saturated hydraulic conductivity, water table, drain discharge and winter crop yields. Subsurface drainage systems with two drain depths of 0....

The coastal areas in Yemen are threatened by much environmental degradation such as sand dunes movements, desertification, groundwater drawdown and seawater intrusion. Collaborative research based on participatory rural appraisal (PRA) was conducted in Al-Mujaylis village, located in the downstream part of Wadi Zabid and Wadi Rima (wadi is Arabic t...

Since the Middle Ages the Dutch have reclaimed many lakes and parts of the sea, creating polders. Drainage is required to use the land: for the inhabitants, for agriculture and for nature. Traditionally drainage was by gravity: through open (and later pipe) drains excess rainfall was transferred into open collector drains, from where the water was...

Since the attempt to apply the concept of Agropark into Saemangeum agricultural land recently, necessity for adequate funding to develop the concept into reality and which is appropriate to Saemangeum area. In this study, it is intended to propose two options to introduce Agropark into Saemangeum agricultural land. First, without considering the cu...

Most drain spacing calculations do not take the horizontal flow in the unsaturated zone above the groundwater table into consideration. In this paper, a solution is presented that includes the contribution of unsaturated flow above the groundwater table. Drain spacing calculated with the newly derived equation is compared to that calculated with th...

SUBSURFACE DRAINAGE discusses the need for drainage in irrigated areas. It gives an overview of the systems that are available to drain irrigated lands and explains the soil and hydrological factors which influence drainage. The methodology to design field drainage systems is discussed, which special emphasis on the design of subsurface drainage sy...

In this series of lectures “Main Drainage Systems” we shall discuss the procedure to design a main drainage system. After a brief introduction into the need for drainage in agricultural lands (Chapter 2), the components of a drainage system are discussed, with special emphasis on the main drainage system (Chapter 3). Finally in Chapter 4, examples...

In the Nickerie District in West Surinam, rice is cultivated in 22 polders (about 15,000 ha). The district has an average rainfall of around 1800 mm; irrigation is needed to grow two rice crops per year. The main source of the irrigation water is the Nanni Swamp; however, in dry periods additional irrigation water is pumped from the Corantijn River...

Throughout the world, tidal areas are being developed. The initial development is generally for agriculture, often in combination with flood protection. The development focus in tidal areas is, however, gradually moving to ports, harbours, transportation routes, industries, and aquaculture, housing and recreation facilities. Models are often used t...

Since the Middle Ages the Dutch have reclaimed many lakes and parts of the sea, creating polders. The saying "God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands." is obviously a huge exaggeration but it is true that about 1/3 of the Netherlands is below mean sea level and about 2/3 protected by dikes against flooding. Drainage is essentia...

In Surinam, the contribution of the exploitation of the natural resources (minerals and forest products) is gradually decreasing. Subsequently, the agricultural sector (mainly the rice sector) becomes more important for the national income and food security. The rice sector, however, has become less competitive as the knowledge on recent developmen...

Bij het meten en interpreteren van grondwaterstanden spelen drie vragen: 1) Hoe kunnen we een grondwaterstand meten op één bepaalde locatie?; 2) Hoe kunnen we een tijdreeks van grondwaterstanden op een locatie in een samenvattende maat karakteriseren?; 3) Hoe kunnen we deze maat ruimtelijk interpoleren en opschalen naar een groter gebied? Dit rappo...

Het project Klimaatbestendig Nederland (KBNL) heeft als doel de consequenties in beeld te brengen van verschillende keuzes die het Rijk zou kunnen maken bij het nemen van adaptatiemaatregelen in relatie tot klimaatverandering in Nederland. Deze keuzes zijn echter niet sectoraal maar vooral integraal van karakter. Integraal houdt in dat bij de te ma...

Higher water levels and more space for water will fundamentally change the way our coastal lowlands are being managed. Appropriate conservation, adaptation and mitigation actions need to take place in the context of sustainable development. In the Netherlands, adaptation measures focus on the water management system as well as the spatial planning....