Comparison of border irrigation practices in different morphologic fields

To evaluate the effect of field morphologic change on irrigation performance, the field soil characteristics and irrigation performance of 4 types of irrigation fields i.e. border-strip irrigation (BSI), rill irrigation (RI), shallow-furrow-border irrigation (SFBI) and border-furrow irrigation (BFI) were calculated and simulated with WinSRFR3.1 model. The differences induced by the change of field morphologic between these irrigation patterns were compared, and reasonable border lengths for different morphologics were suggested. It was concluded that soil infiltration characteristics and field roughness were quite diverse in different morphologic fields, characterized with the highest roughness in BFI while lowest in BSI, and the rapidest infiltration rate in BSI while slowest in SFBI. For long border, the performance is in order of SFBI> BFI>RI>BSI. Under a feasible inflow rate of 4.5 L/(m·s), to obtain above 80% application efficiency, the optimum border length should be 200–220 m, 170–190 m, 150–170 m, and 150–170 m for SFBI, BFI, RI, and BSI, respectively. Field morphologic playes an important role in surface irrigation performance, and it is necessary to be considered in the futher study and practice of surface irrigation.