Xinhua Jia

North Dakota State University | NDSU · Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering

Agent-based modeling (ABM) has been employed to understand and capture the complexity of the coupled human-nature processes in water resource systems. One of the challenges is to model human decisions in the coupled human and natural systems. Hydraulic fracturing water uses were distributed through a depot-based water allocation system in the Bakke...

A study was conducted at three sites in North Dakota to strengthen understanding of the usefulness of different proximal geophysical data types in agricultural contexts of varying pedology. This study hypothesizes that electromagnetic induction (EMI), gamma‐ray sensor (GRS), cosmic‐ray neutron sensor (CRNS), and elevation data layers are all useful...

This paper describes a multi-site and multi-decadal dataset of artificially drained agricultural fields in seven Midwest states and North Carolina, USA. Thirty-nine research sites provided data on three conservation practices for cropland with subsurface tile drainage: saturated buffers, controlled drainage, and drainage water recycling. These prac...

As part of the Hudson Bay drainage system in North America, the Red River of the North Basin (RRB) has been subject to Spring River flooding in the past century. Previously, forecast errors had led to inadequate flood preparations that resulted in tremendous losses and overspending of taxpayer's dollars in flood response. National Aeronautics and S...

In North Dakota, agriculture contributes a large sector of the state’s economy, but vegetable production is limited due to the state’s climate condition. Inadequate soil moisture and low soil temperature are the two major factors prohibiting quality produce and high-yield vegetable production. In this study, a soil-water potential, sensor-based dri...

The potential impact of controlled drainage (CD), which limits drainage outflow, and subirrigation (SI), which provides supplemental water through drain tile, on surface water quality are not well known in the Red River Valley (RRV). In this study, water samples were collected and analyzed for chemical concentrations from a tile-drained field that...

Highlights Hydraulic conductivity was measured in frozen and unfrozen soil conditions by a minidisk infiltrometer. In the RRB, frozen sandy loam and silty clay soils had the highest and lowest hydraulic conductivity, respectively. Three simple equations were developed for the three soils to predict frozen soil hydraulic conductivity. Freeze-thaw cy...

Highlights Drainage water recycling captures and stores agricultural drainage water for reuse as supplemental irrigation. Drainage water recycling can both increase crop production and benefit downstream water quality. Depending on management, drainage water recycling can also provide other complementary benefits. Research needs to advance drainage...

Drainage water recycling (DWR) involves capture, storage, and reuse of surface and subsurface drainage water as irrigation to enhance crop production during critical times of the growing season. Our objectives were to synthesize 53 site‐years of data from 1996 to 2017 in the Midwestern U.S. to determine the effect of DWR using primarily subirrigati...

Predicting surface runoff and flooding in seasonally frozen areas such as the Red River of the North Basin (RRB) in USA is a challenging task. It depends on the knowledge of the complex process of infiltration in frozen soil, such as phase changes of water, ice content and distribution in the infiltration zone (the top 0-30 cm of the soil profile),...

As an important component of the water budget, quantifying actual crop evapotranspiration (ET) will enable better planning, management, and allocation of the water resources. However, accurate ET measurement has always been a challenging task in agricultural water management. In the upper Midwest, where subsurface drainage is a common practice due...

Human‐induced landscape changes affect hydrologic responses (e.g., floods) that can be detected from a suite of satellite and model data sets. Tapping these vast data sets using machine learning algorithms can produce critically important and accurate insights. In the Red River of the North Basin in the United States, agricultural subsurface draina...

Over the past 20 years, marketplace demand for corn has prompted many farmers in the Red River Valley (RRV) of the north to include more corn in their crop rotations. With a very flat topography and heavy clayey soils, the RRV can have shallow water tables in the spring and fall but can be dry in the summer. Due to these field conditions, some farm...

Lysimeter experiments were conducted under greenhouse conditions to investigate canola (Brassica napus L.) plant water use, growth, and yield parameters for three different water table depths of 30, 60, and 90 cm. Additionally, control experiments were conducted, and only irrigation was applied to these lysimeters without water table limitations. T...

The Red River of the North basin (RRB) is vulnerable to spring snowmelt flooding because of its flat terrain, low permeability soils, and the presence of river ice jams resulting from the river's northward flow direction. The onset and magnitude of major flood events in the RRB have been very difficult to forecast, in part due to limited field obse...

Turfgrass actual evapotranspiration (ET) measurements are critical for water management and irrigation scheduling. With no historical ET measurements in eastern North Dakota, turfgrass ET rates were measured with the residual method using eddy covariance instrumentation and two arrays of soil moisture sensors on unirrigated turfgrass under natural...

Water table contribution to plant water use is a significant element in improving water use efficiency (WUE) for agricultural water management. In this study, lysimeter experiments were conducted in a controlled greenhouse environment to investigate the response of soybean water uptake and growth parameters under four different water table depths (...

Most cropland in the upper Midwest will experience periods of excess water and drought conditions during a growing season. When the objective is to produce high yields, effective use of a subsurface water management system can help provide optimal soil moisture conditions for growth. A subsurface water management system includes draining excess wat...

A soil water release curve (SWRC) describes the critical and soil-specific relationship between soil water content and matric potential. In this study, soil moisture and corresponding matric potentials were measured using (1) a new method by HYPROP and WP4 dewpoint potentiometer, and, (2) the traditional method by hanging water column, Tempe cell,...

The study object was to assess the performance of three sensors in estimating VWC in laboratory conditions. Three soil moisture sensors (Acclima Inc., TDR-315, Decagon Devices, Inc. 5TE, and Stevens Water Monitoring Systems, Inc. Hydra Probe) were used in soil columns. Testing of the TDR-315 and Hydra Probe sensors showed good agreement between act...

Soil surface topography affects fundamental hydrologic processes, such as infiltration and soil water percolation. Topographic variations potentially alter both the magnitude and directions of unsaturated flow. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of surface topography on wetting front moving patterns under different rainfall and...

Agricultural subsurface drainage changes the field hydrology and potentially the amount of water available to the crop by altering the flow path and the rate and timing of water removal. Evapotranspiration (ET) is normally among the largest components of the field water budget, and the changes in ET from the introduction of subsurface drainage are...

Spring snowmelt poses an annual flood risk in nonmountainous regions, such as the northern Great Plains of North America. However, ground observations are often not sufficient to characterize the spatiotemporal variation of drivers of snowmelt floods for operational flood forecasting purposes. Remote sensing platforms are well suited to nonmountain...

Subsurface drainage is an essential practice for farmlands with shallow water table. An accurately designed subsurface drainage system can improve soil and water environment as well as the crop yield. Computer models, such as DRAINMOD, are often used to simulate the field hydrology or design the subsurface drainage systems under different scenarios...

Accurate evapotranspiration (ET) estimation is essential to crop water management and irrigation scheduling. As a major agricultural area, North Dakota lacks studies on crop ET measurement for major crops. In this study, an eddy covariance system (EC) and two sets of soil moisture sensors were installed to measure cool season grass ET and estimate...

Figure 1: A drainage water recycling system consists of storing drainage water in a pond, which is then used for field irrigation. Irrigation methods vary with site conditions and may include overhead irrigation (left) or subirrigation (right). Drainage water recycling is the practice of capturing excess water drained from fields, storing the drain...

An 8-page publication, part of the Transforming Drainage project, that provides a broad overview of the benefits, costs and issues related to drainage water recycling systems.

A period of excess precipitation since 1993 in the Devils Lake basin in northeastern North Dakota has caused extensive flooding of agricultural land and has raised the question of whether irrigation of agricultural crops to increase evapotranspiration (ET) might be an effective way to remove water from the basin. The objectives of this study were t...

Using a subsurface drainage system, subirrigation (SI) applies water below the ground surface and raises the phreatic water to within or near the root zone. SI is relatively new to the Red River Valley (RRV) of the North in eastern North Dakota (ND) and west central Minnesota (MN). In 2011, two SI field sites in the RRV were installed and have show...

The saline/sodic soils of the U.S. Northern Great Plains often have very low yields due to poor germination, become exceptionally hard when the soil dries, and can be a sediment source following rainfall events. In addition, subsurface drainage can result in the conversion of saline/sodic soils to sodic soils. Calcium-based surface amendments (Ca a...

Drainage Water Storage for Improved Resiliency and Environmental Performance of Agricultural Landscapes

Subirrigation (SI) applies water below the ground surface and raises the phreatic water to within or near the root zone by using a subsurface drainage system. It is relatively new to the Red River Valley (RRV) of the North in eastern North Dakota (ND) and west central Minnesota (MN). In 2011, two SI field sites in the RRV were installed and have sh...

In the saline/sodic and sodic soils of the northern Great Plains, subsurface drainage can inadvertently result in clay particle dispersion if the surface soils are leached with rainwater. Under these conditions, penetration resistance (PR) in wet soil can be used to examine the effectiveness of free drainage (FD) vs. no drainage (ND) treatments and...

Drained lands, which include some of the most productive lands in the world, can experience both water excess and water deficit within a year. Storing drained water within the landscape could increase the sustainability of water for agriculture, particularly as intense rainfall and prolonged summer drought continue to increase under future climate...

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Infiltration is an important process in the hydrological cycle and the main source of water for crop production. Though infiltration occurs at the soil surface, it is affected by the soil properties below the ground surface, such as soil water content and hydraulic conductivities. Accurate measurement of infiltration rate is possible when accurate...

Subsurface (tile) drainage on agricultural land with poor natural drainage allows timelier field operation and contributes to improved crop yields. Considerable uncertainty exists regarding the impact of the tiles on the water balance at the field scale, including impacts on crop-consumptive water use. The objectives of this study are to estimate a...

The debate about subsurface drainage effects on streamflows has been reignited in the Red River of the North basin in North America, after a decades-long abnormally wet weather pattern in the region. Our study evaluated the applicability of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) in modeling subsurface drainage in a cold environment; we then empl...

Growing degree days (GDD) is widely used in predicting crop phenological development and maturity. GDD for a particular crop is calculated as the residue of daily mean air temperature and a base temperature of that crop. GDD varies among different crop types, varieties, and hybrids for different locations. When soil surface condition is changed wit...

Potential water consumption for irrigation scheduling in North Dakota was typically calculated from a reference Evapotranspiration (ETref) using the Jensen-Haise method and its associated crop coefficient (Kc) curves developed in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The ETref method proposed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Environmental and Water Res...

Many laboratories appraise soil salinity from measurement of electrical conductivity of 1:5 soil to water extract (EC1:5) due to its simplicity. However, the influence of salinity on plant growth is mainly based on electrical conductivity of saturated paste extract (ECe), so it is necessary to convert EC1:5 to ECe in order to assess plant response....

Due to poor drainage and flat terrain, a prolonged wet cycle since the early 1990s in the Red River Valley (RRV) of the North has caused frequent flooding in most farmland, delaying or even preventing spring planting. To combat high soil water content, farmers have adopted tile drainage practices. To schedule crop planting or to evaluate the effici...

Throughout the Midwest, drain tiles are being installed to manage soil moisture and increase crop yields on many traditionally low productivity and high salinity wet fields. As the rate of tiling has increased over the last decade, so has the interest in subirrigation (SI), the process of adding water to a tile drainage system to provide necessary...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important component for determining water balance and water transfer. Water management practices (WMP) that utilize soil water balance algorithms to determine the best irrigation schedules tend to rely heavily on measured or estimated ET values. However, ET values can be difficult and expensive to obtain. In this study...

A field experiment was conducted during the 2009 and 2010 growing seasons to determine the effect of subsurface drainage (SSD) on evapotranspiration (ET) and crop coefficients (K-c) for a farm field in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. The total area of the field was 44 ha, half of which had subsurface drainage installed in the fall of 2002 at...

Rising water tables, increased soil salinity, and poor trafficability have prompted rapid expansion of subsurface drainage in the Red River Valley of the North in eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. A conventional subsurface drainage (CD) and subirrigation (SI) field study was conducted in southeast North Dakota from 2008 to 2010 to in...

As part of a comprehensive study investigating how subsurface drainage systems affect the energy and water balances on land surfaces, a large aperture scintillometer (LAS) was used to determine the sensible heat and momentum fluxes over a corn (Zea mays) field. To keep the flux footprint of the observation within the 22 ha field boundary, the LAS h...

Water levels in the Devil’s Lake basin of northeastern North Dakota have risen substantially since 1993 causing flooding and damage to agricultural land and infrastructure. A proposed flood mitigation method is to remove water from the basin through irrigation and evapotranspiration (ET). Constraints on the project include predominantly clay-loam s...

Subsurface drainage (SSD) is an effective way to remove excessive water from soil and it can also be used to control the salinity level in the upper soil layer. To evaluate the effect of SSD on water availability (water quantity and water quality), a field experiment was conducted in the Red River Valley (RRV) of the North in North Dakota. Corn (Ze...

A field experiment is being conducted since the fall of 2007 to quantify the water balance and quality in a farm field at Fairmount, ND. The total area of the field is 44 ha, half of which had subsurface drainage (SSD) installed in fall of 2002 at approximately 1.1 m depth and with 18.2 m drain spacing. Corn (Zea Mays) was planted in 2009. Evapotra...

Bahiagrass (Paspalum notatum) is a warm-season grass used primarily in pastures and along highways and other low maintenance public areas in Florida. It is also used in landscapes to some extent because of its drought tolerance. Bahiagrass can survive under a range of moisture conditions from no irrigation to very wet conditions. Its well-watered c...

The eddy correlation (EC) method has been recommended as one of the standard methods for measuring actual evapotranspiration. One of the challenges in interpreting eddy correlation measurements is that the balance between various energy components measured and the total energy received can sometimes be off by up to 30%. An independent measurement o...

A web-based decision support tool, zone mapping application for precision farming (ZoneMAP, http://zonemap.umac.org), has been developed to automatically determine the optimal number of management zones and delineate them using satellite imagery and field data provided by users. Application rates, such as of fertilizer, can be prescribed for each z...

A method is presented for estimating hourly actual evapotranspiration from short natural vegetation or agricultural crops. The method, which can be used to calibrate remotely sensed evapotranspiration, consists of equating the ET flux equations based on the generalized Penman-Monteith (GPM) combination method and a humidity gradient (HG) method. By...

Measurement of flow characteristics from tile drainage pump stations has always been difficult. In a typical pump station, float controls are used to turn the pump on and off. This intermittent discharge is difficult to measure accurately with standard flow measurement devices... Indirect measurement of flow and volume was accomplished using a curr...

When many places in the world are facing water scarcities, the Devils Lake basin in northeastern North Dakota has received above normal inflow due to excess rainfall since 1993. A research project is being conducted to determine the extent to which irrigation can utilize some of the excess surface waters in the basin without impairing the productiv...

Subsurface drainage (or tile drainage) is expected to expand significantly in the Red River Valley of the North, yet its effects on soil quality have not been studied. The objectives of this project are to evaluate the changes of soil hardness and physical properties overlying tile drained and undrained areas. In 2002, tile was installed in the sou...

Accurate determination of potential and reference evapotranspiration is essential to estimate water balances. In most standardized methods, such as the Penman-Monteith and Priestley-Taylor methods, net radiation is one of the most important forcing data. Unfortunately few stations measure net radiation. Instead, net radiation is typically calculate...

Reference evapotranspiration (ETo) has been used for irrigation scheduling and water management of urban landscapes from the publicly accessible weather networks by water governing districts and homeowners alike. However, most of these weather stations are located on small grass surfaces and does not meet the minimum fetch distance as required by t...

Artificial turfgrass is a synthetic material made to resemble real grass. A new generation of synthetic turfgrass is made of plastics with different composite materials, and is supported by a sand and/or rubber infill material and subsurface base layer. Synthetic turfgrass is being increasingly used on many athletic fields, such as soccer, football...

Florida citrus groves are typically grown in two regions of the state: flatwoods and ridge. The southern flatwoods citrus area has poorly drained fine textured sands with low organic matter in the shallow root zone. Ridge citrus is located in the northern ridge citrus zone and has fine to coarse textured sands with low water-holding capacity. Two c...

North Dakota has a short growing season, high irrigation yield potential and climate conditions that vary from the east to the west. Accurate determination of crop water requirements for the different climate areas in the state is critical for irrigation scheduling, efficient water management and water permit management. Lack of recent research on...

Bahiagrass (Paspalum notatum) crop coefficients (Kc) were determined for July 2003 through December 2006 in central Florida. The eddy correlation method was used to estimate crop evapotranspiration (ETc) rates. The standardized reference evapotranspiration (ETo) equation (ASCE-EWRI, 2005) was applied to calculate the ETo values using weather data o...

Bahiagrass (Paspalum notatum) crop coefficients (Kc) were determined in central Florida in 2004 and 2005. Crop evapotranspiration (ETc) rates were measured simultaneously using weighing lysimeters and an eddy correlation system. Reference evapotranspiration (ETo) values were calculated by the standardized ETo equation by the Environmental and Water...

Nitrate contamination of surface and ground water is a problem worldwide. Nitrate in drinking water presents a human health risk. The major source of nitrate contamination is believed to be nitrogen fertilizer from agricultural fields. Best Management Practices have been developed to guide fertilizer use and minimize nitrogen losses, but they do no...

Three weighing lysimeters were developed for evapotranspiration research at the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Plant Science Research and Education Unit near Citra, Florida. The lysimeter design followed accepted procedures as well as aspects unique to the study site, including a foundation designed for a perche...

Irrigated agriculture is the primary consumer of water in the United States accounting for 80% of water use. In Florida alone, irrigated agriculture accounts for over 45% of the total freshwater withdrawals. As competition for freshwater rises, the demand for refined estimates of water requirements increases. In the Southeast U.S., regional scale w...

Florida's rapidly increasing population requires the efficient use of natural water resources. Accurate determination of reference evapotranspiration (ETo) is essential to the estimation of a key water balance component. Data collected from automatic weather stations can be used to determine ETo following standardized methods, such as ASCE-EWRI. Ne...

Nitrate contamination of surface and groundwater has become a serious concern in many agricultural areas throughout the world. Nitrate fertilization is widely used to increase crop yields and quality, but nitrates are highly soluble in water with low retention by soils. Appropriate nitrate application practices can minimize losses, but untimely rai...

Citrus is one of the most important agricultural crops in Florida. Citrus groves are typically located in two soil profiles: flatwoods and ridge. Flatwoods soils are poorly drained fine textured sands with organic matter in the shallow root zone, which require less frequent field irrigation with a longer duration when using a fixed flow rate. Ridge...

A key component in the calculation of reference crop evapotranspiration (ETr) is the weather data. If the weather data have been collected from a station under nonreference conditions, the data itself may contain errors, which will in turn yield inaccurate ETr estimates. It was proposed by Allen in 1996 that data used for evapotranspiration be scru...

Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine if nitrate transport in soils can be controlled using electrokinetic (EK) technology. Nitrate concentration, pH, electrical potential and soil water content were measured in soil column tests with three soils at different distances from the anode and at desired times. Constant electrical current wa...