Suitability of Sustainable Agricultural Drainage Systems for adapting agriculture to climate change

This paper presents a comprehensive and practical method for Sustainable Agricultural Drainage Systems (SADS) design. It is aimed at studying the suitability of using surface runoff as irrigation source. The method determines the optimum amount of surface runoff to be used for irrigation considering both environmental constraints (aquifers recharge, discharge to natural water courses) and investment and operation costs. The developed method has been applied to the Spanish irrigation district Villalar de los Comuneros Sector 1 located in Valladolid. The estimation of the optimum SADS provision was calculated for most of the major crops at the irrigation district highlighting that SADS facilities can reduce the amount of external provision of water for irrigation while maintaining the aquifer's recharge and the natural discharge to water courses. The simulations run for climate change forecasting scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways, RCP, RCP45, RCP60, RCP85) showed that optimum SADS would reduce irrigation requirements and would increase natural fluxes (both aquifers and natural water courses) therefore improving the general water cycle in rural environments with productive agriculture. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

This paper introduces a comprehensive and practical method for Sustainable Agricultural Drainage Systems (SADS) design, which focuses on using surface runoff as irrigation source and has been applied to an irrigation district in Spain. The results indicate that optimum SADS facilities can reduce external water provision for irrigation while maintaining groundwater recharge and natural discharge, improving the water cycle in rural environments with productive agriculture.