Economic Analysis Approach for Identifying Optimal Microirrigation Uniformity
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 8
Abstract
Nonuniform pressure of microirrigation systems negatively impacts crop productivity, water utilization, and nonpoint source pollution. However, achieving network pressure uniformity can be prohibitively expensive. This paper presents an economic optimization method that seeks to balance competing costs and benefits. A custom computer software script is developed to implement the method and an irrigation case study is presented. Regression analysis showed that the relationship between economic efficiency and Christiansen uniformity (CU) is a cubic function with an optimum uniformity (i.e., in reference to CU) at 0.78 for cotton and 0.86 for olive trees. The results also indicate that water cost is the most important factor influencing total cost and economic efficiency, and next is capital cost. Also, irrigation systems with a relatively small subunit size (0.1–0.42 ha for cotton and 0.72–2.16 ha for olive) commonly lead to a high economic efficiency. Finally, to guarantee adequate uniformity, the most efficient microirrigation system design will necessarily use the smallest possible size of the manifold.
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Acknowledgments
The research reported in this paper was financially supported by the National Science and Technology Support Program (2011BAD29B02), the 111 project (B12007) and the West Light Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 8 • August 2015
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 28, 2014
Accepted: Dec 4, 2014
Published online: Jan 12, 2015
Discussion open until: Jun 12, 2015
Published in print: Aug 1, 2015
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