Spatial Modeling of Soil Properties for Subsurface Drainage Projects
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 124, Issue 4
Abstract
Selecting areas for a subsurface drainage system and the proper design of such a system require sufficient and reliable soil data, which are inherently variable in both space and time. This study shows how geostatistical techniques can be applied for both feasibility and design stages of a drainage project to provide decision makers and designers with reliable estimates, a way of selecting areas for a subsurface drainage system and determining its implementation priority, and a way of accurate design of that system. The study is applied to a practical area of 1,533 ha in the Nile Delta of Egypt. Results showed that measured values of water table depth and soil salinity yielded ≈40% underestimation of drainage necessity and 59% overestimation of soil salinity levels, respectively, compared with their kriged values. The effect of using the kriged hydraulic conductivity on the determined lateral drain spacing and the required lateral drain pipe length was demonstrated. Five percent wider drain spacing was obtained with kriged hydraulic conductivity compared with its measured value with most steady- and unsteady-state drainage formulas. This value was approximately doubled using some other unsteady formulas. The minimum sample size for estimating a mean value at a given precision level could be reduced by three to seven times using kriging technique.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1.
Aboufirassi, M., and Marino, M.(1983). “Kriging of water levels in the Souss aquifer, Morocco.”Math. Geol., 15(4), 537–551.
2.
Agrawal, O. P., Rao, K. V. G. K., Chauhan, H. S., and Khandelwal, M. K.(1995). “Geostatistical analysis of soil salinity improvement with subsurface drainage system.”Trans. ASAE, 38(5), 1427–1433.
3.
Amer, M. H.(1990). “Design of drainage system with special reference to Egypt.”Symp. Land Drainage for Salinity Control in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions, Water Research Center, Cairo, Egypt, 1, 39–59.
4.
“ASCE manual and reports on engineering practice no. 71.” (1990a). Agricultural salinity assessment and management, K. K. Tanji, ed., ASCE, New York, N.Y.
5.
ASCE Task Committee on Geostatistical Techniques in Geohydrology.(1990b). “Review of geostatistics in geohydrology.”J. Hydr. Engrg., 116(5), 612–632.
6.
Bouwer, H.(1969). “Planning and interpreting soil permeability measurements.”J. Irrig. and Drain. Div., ASCE, 95(3), 391–402.
7.
Bouwer, H., and Van Schilfgaarde, J. (1963). “Simplified method of predicting fall of water table in drained land.”Trans. ASCE, 6(4), 288–291, 296.
8.
Bracq, P., and Delay, F.(1997). “Transmissivity and morphological features in a chalk aquifer: A geastatistical approach of their relationship.”J. Hydrol., 191, 139–160.
9.
Burgess, T. M., and Webster, R.(1980a). “Optimal interpolation and isarithmic mapping of soil properties. I. The semivariogram and punctual kriging.”J. Soil Sci., 31(2), 315–331.
10.
Burgess, T. M., and Webster, R.(1980b). “Optimal interpolation and isarithmic mapping of soil properties. II. Block kriging.”J. Soil Sci., 31(2), 333–341.
11.
Clark, I. (1979). Practical geostatistics, Applied Science Publisher, London, U.K.
12.
Davidoff, B., Lewis, J. W., and Selim, H. M.(1986). “Variability of soil temperature with depth along a transect.”Soil Sci., 142(2), 114–123.
13.
Davis, B. M.(1987). “Use and abuses of cross-validation in geostatistics.”Math. Geol., 19(3), 241–248.
14.
Delhomme, J. P.(1978). “Kriging in the hydrosciences.”Adv. Water Resour., 1(5), 251–266.
15.
Donnan, W. W.(1946). “Model tests of a tile spacing formula.”Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc., 11, 131–136.
16.
Dumm, L. D.(1954). “Drain spacing formula: New formula for determining depth and spacing of subsurface drains in irrigated lands.”Agric. Engrg., 35, 725–730.
17.
Fonteh, M. F., and Podmore, T.(1994). “Application of geostatistics to characterize spatial variability of infiltration in furrow irrigation.”Agric. Water Mgmt., 25, 153–165.
18.
Gallichand, J., Prasher, S. O., Broughton, R. S., and Marcotte, D.(1991). “Kriging of hydraulic conductivity for subsurface drainage design.”J. Irrig. and Drain Engrg., 117(5), 667–681.
19.
Gallichand, J., Marcotte, D., and Prasher, S. O.(1992). “Including uncertainty of hydraulic conductivity into drainage design.”J. Irrig. and Drain. Engrg., 118(5), 744–756.
20.
Hajrasuliha, S., Baniabbassi, N., Metthey, J., and Nielsen, D. R.(1980). “Spatial variability of soil sampling for salinity studies in Southwest Iran.”Irrig. Sci., 1, 197–208.
21.
Hamdy, A., Abdel-Dayem, S., and Abu-Zeid, M.(1993). “Saline water management for optimum crop production.”Agric. Water Mgmt., 24, 189–203.
22.
Hawley, M. E., McCuen, R. H., and Jackson, T. J.(1982). “Volume-accuracy relationship in soil moisture sampling.”J. Irrig. and Drain. Engrg., 108(1), 1–11.
23.
Hoeksema, R. J.(1989). “Cokriging model for estimation of water table elevation.”Water Resour. Res., 25(3), 429–438.
24.
Hooghoudt, S. B. (1940). “Bijdragen tot de kennis van eenige naturrkundige grootheden van de grond. 7. Algemeene beschouwing van het probleem van de detailontwatering en de infiltratie door middel van parallel loopende drains, greppels, slooten en kanalen.”Versl. Land. Onderz, 46(14), 515–707 (in Dutch).
25.
Hosseini, E., Gallichand, J., and Marcotte, D.(1994). “Theoretical and experimental performance of spatial interpolation methods for soil salinity analysis.”Trans. ASAE, 37(6), 1799–1807.
26.
Isaaks, E. H., and Srivastava, R. M.(1988). “Spatial continuity measures for probabilistic and deterministic geostatistics.”Math. Geol., 20(4), 313–341.
27.
Isaaks, E. H., and Srivastava, R. M. (1989). An introduction to applied geostatistics. Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.
28.
Journel, A. G., and Huijbregts, C. J. (1978). Mining geostatistics. Academic Press, Inc., London, U.K.
29.
Kirkham, D.(1964). “Physical artifices and formulas for approximating water table fall in tile-drained land.”Proc. Soil Sci. Soc. Am., 28(5), 585–590.
30.
Knighton, R. E., and James, D. W.(1985). “Soil test phosphorus as a regionalized variable in leveled land.”Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 49, 675–679.
31.
Laslett, G. M., and McBratney, A. B.(1990). “Further comparison of spatial methods for predicting soil pH.”Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 54, 1553–1558.
32.
Luthin, J. N.(1959). “The falling water table in tile drainage. II. Proposed criteria for spacing tile drains.”Trans. ASAE, 2(1), 44–45.
33.
Luthin, J. N., and Worstell, R. V. (1959). “The falling water table in tile drainage. III. Factors affecting the rate of fall.”Trans. ASAE, 2(1), 45–47, 51.
34.
Marx, D. B., Gilmour, J. T., Scott, H. D., and Ferguson, J. A.(1988). “Effect of long-term water management in a humid region on spatial variability of soil chemical status.”Soil Sci., 145(3), 188–193.
35.
Matheron, G.(1963). “Principles of geostatistics.”Economic Geol., 58, 1246–1266.
36.
Moustafa, M. M., and Yomota, A.(1998). “Use of a covariance variogram to investigate influence of subsurface drainage on spatial variability of soil-water properties.”Agric. Water Mgmt., 37(1), 1–19.
37.
Olea, R. A. (1975). “Optimum mapping techniques.”Kansas Geological Survey Series on Spatial Analysis, Kansas Geological Survey, Lawrence, Kans.
38.
Rogers, J. S., Selim, H. M., Carter, C. E., and Fouss, J. L.(1991). “Variability of auger hole hydraulic conductivity values for a commerce silt loam.”Trans. ASAE, 34(3), 876–882.
39.
Russo, D.(1984). “A geostatistical approach to solute transport in heterogeneous fields and its application to salinity management.”Water Resour. Res., 20(9), 1260–1270.
40.
Samper, F. J., and Neuman, S. P.(1989). “Estimation of spatial covariance structures by adjoint state maximum likelihood cross validation. 1. Theory.”Water Resour. Res., 25, 351–362.
41.
Shoup, T. E. (1983). Numerical methods for the personal computer. Prentice–Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
42.
Srivastava, R. M., and Parker, H. M. (1989). “Robust measures of spatial continuity.”Geostatistics, Vol. 1, M. Armstrong, ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 295–308.
43.
Trangmar, B. B., Yost, R. S., and Uehara, G. (1985). “Application of geostatistics to spatial studies of soil properties.”Advances in Agronomy, Vol. 38, N. C. Brady, ed., Academic Press, Inc., London, U.K.
44.
Van Beers, W. F. (1983). “The auger hole method.”Bull. No. 1, International Institute of Land Reclamation and Improvements, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
45.
Van Schilfgaarde, J.(1963). “Design of tile drainage for falling water tables.”J. Irrig. and Drain. Div., ASCE, 89(2), 1–11.
46.
Vauclin, M., Vieira, S. R., Vachaud, G., and Nielsen, D. R.(1983). “The use of cokriging with limited field soil observations.”Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 47, 175–184.
47.
Vieira, S. R., Nielsen, D. R., and Biggar, J. W.(1981). “Spatial variability of field-measured infiltration rate.”Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 45(6), 1040–1048.
48.
Webster, R., and Oliver, M. A. (1989). “Disjunctive kriging in agriculture.”Geostatistics, Vol. 1, M. Armstrong, ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 421–432.
49.
Williamson, R. E., and Kriz, G. J.(1970). “Response of agricultural crops to flooding, depth of water table and soil gaseous composition.”Trans. ASAE, 13(2), 216–220.
50.
Yates, S. R., and Warrick, A. W.(1987). “Estimating soil water content using cokriging.”Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 51, 23–30.
51.
Yost, R. S., Uehara, G., and Fox, R. L.(1982). “Geostatistical analysis of soil chemical properties of large land areas. I. Semi-variograms.”Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 46, 1028–1032.
52.
Zhang, R., Warrick, A. W., and Myers, D. E.(1992). “Improvement of the prediction of soil particle size fractions using spectral properties.”Geoderma, 52, 223–234.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 124 • Issue 4 • July 1998
Pages: 218 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Jul 1, 1998
Published in print: Jul 1998
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.