Water management strategies of Yellow River Irrigation District based on SWAP and MODFLOW models

Utilization of surface water and groundwater is unreasonable in most of the Yellow River Irrigation Areas, which causes extremely water wasting and grondwater overexploiting problems. In order to allocate water resources reasonably, this paper established soil moisture model and 3D transient groundwater model with SWAP and Visual MODFLOW in Liuyuankou Irrigation System. The models were calibrated and verified with measured data. Irrigation schedules were simulated by SWAP under different irrigation control standards within 2006 to 2007 and the appropriate irrigation control standard was proposed. Based on this proposed standard, Multi-year irrigation schedules and Irrigation water and crop relative yield in different groundwater depth were simulated by SWAP, to get the optimum range of groundwater depth. Exploitation quantity and time were determined by multi-year irrigation schedules. Seven schemes which were drafted according to different crops planting structure and well-canal irrigation ratio were simulated by MODFLOW. The results showed that the proposed strategy, which 30% of irrigation amount from Yellow River in the north pumps groundwater and conveys the saving water to the south, can maintain reasonable groundwater depth and effectively decrease groundwater evaporation losses.