Irrigation Application for Subsurface Irrigation

Hello,

I am developing a model for an area that has large areas of sugarcane which is irrigated through subsurface methods (seepage irrigation). In seepage irrigation, water is pumped into small, lateral ditches within the fields and the water table is raised so that capilary forces draw water into the root zone. Other than building the ditches in MIKE11 and pumping water in to raise the water table, do you have any suggestions of how I can use the irrigation application methods already available in MIKESHE? I was thinking of the sheet application but this isn't quite right and I would lose a lot more water to ET than in seepage irrigation. I was also thinking that I could use drip applied and try to match application rates to seepage rates, but the issue here is that drip is much more efficient than seepage and I won't lose enough water to ET.

Thank you

Hi,
I don't really have a good answer for you.
The drip method is probably your best bet. But it isn't ideal.
The amount of drip that infiltrates to the GW will be net of Actual ET (ie rate of drip - AET).
Remember that the drip is added to ponded depth, and your ET will also be taken first from ponding before root zone ET.
So, you will lose some or at lot of your drip to ET.

I had a similar problem a few years ago, and there we created an array of pumping wells to add the water directly to the shallow groundwater.
This way we could control precisely how much water was added to the water table.

Regards, Douglas