Editor’s Note

This issue of the Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering consists of 9 papers, two technical notes, a discussion and closure. The papers cover irrigation, storm-water management, water allocation, unit hydrographs, and flumes. The first two papers deal with drip irrigation. The first paper, “Field-Scale Assessment of Uncertainities in Drip Irrigation Lateral Parameters,” by Gyasi-Agyei deals with a hydraulic model to estimate drip irrigation lateral parameters under field conditions. The model is applied to drip irrigation systems used in Australia to establish grass on steep railway embankments. The second paper, “New Computational Fluid Dynamic Procedure to Estimate Friction and Local Losses in Coextruded Drip Laterals,” by Provenzano et al. accesses a CFD technique to evaluate friction and local losses in laterals with in-line coextruded emitters. The third paper, “Optimum Design and Management of Pressurized Branched Irrigation Networks,” by Farmani et al. uses a genetic algorithm to optimize the design and management of irrigation networks. Comparison is made between two scheduling techniques for two real irrigation systems.

The fourth and fifth papers, by Wöhling and Schmitz and Wöhling and Mailhol, are companion papers on model development and application of furrow irrigation. The model simulates 1D surface flow and 2D subsurface flow and plant uptake.

The sixth paper, “Optimization Model for Allocating Water in a River Basin during a Drought,” by Abolpour and Javan describes an optimization model using fuzzy logic and its application for allocating water in two river basins in Iran. The seventh paper, “Layout Design of Irrigation Networks in Highly Parcelled Territories Using Geographical Information System,” by Prats and Picó describes a new heuristic algorithm that is implemented on GIS to remove the subjectivity of the designer in laying out irrigation networks in highly parceled territories.

The eighth and ninth papers deal with storm-water management. The eighth paper, “Evaluation of Four Permeable Pavement Sites in Eastern North Carolina for Runoff Reduction and Water Quality Impacts,” by Bean et al. describes four permeable pavement applications that were constructed and monitored in the coastal plain region of North Carolina. Sites were constructed of either permeable interlocking concrete, porous concrete or concrete, grid pavers. The ninth paper, “Temperature Effects on the Infiltration Rate through an Infiltration Basin BMP,” by Braga et al. describes a study to develop a methodology to simulate varying infiltration rates observed from a large scale rock infiltration basin BMP constructed on the Villanova University campus.

Two technical notes are being published. The first, “Identifying Representative Parameters of an IUH,” by Singh proposes a simple optimization procedure to develop a two-parameter gamma distribution instantaneous unit hydrograph. The second technical note, “Irrigation Water Resources Management for Sustainable Agriculture—The Ankobra Basin, Ghana,” by Yidana et al. describes two irrigation water assessment methods that were applied to water from three different locations of the Ankobra River basin in Ghana, to evaluate its effectiveness as a sustainable irrigation water source.