AGRICULTURAL

DRAINAGE
By

Prof. Dr. Tahir Sarwar

• Course No. : WM-612

• Course Title: Agricultural Drainage

• Credit Hours: 3 (2-1)

 Learning Objectives

To learn the:

• fundamental concept of agricultural drainage;

• types of drainage systems;

• Design of drainage systems; and

• operation and maintenance of drainage systems.

 Course Outlines
• Introduction: learning objectives and set-up of the course, definition of agricultural
drainage, need of drainage, drainage problems in Pakistan, drainage projects in
Pakistan, relationship of irrigation and drainage.

• Water in the Soil: forms and nature of occurrence of water in the soil, pressure in the
soil water, soil moisture characteristics, soil water potential and soil water movement,
hydraulic conductivity, unsaturated zone, soil moisture constants, infiltration and
percolation

• Rainfall and its relationship to drainage: introduction, mean rainfall over a drainage
basin or watershed, depth-area and frequency of rainfall, characteristics of storm,
runoff cycle, runoff hydrograph, estimation of peak runoff rate.
 Course Outlines (Cont’d)
• Surface Drainage Systems: introduction, types of surface drainage systems, surface
drainage system design procedure, standard design criteria, construction of open
drains, maintenance of open drains.

• Subsurface Drainage Systems: introduction, type of pipe drainage systems, design of

pipe drainage system, drainage coefficients, drain spacing formula, determination of
design depth and pipe diameter, the pipe and envelope materials, installation of pipe
drains, maintenance of subsurface drains, mole drainage.

• Vertical Drainage System: introduction, tubewell vs subsurface drainage, factors

affecting the feasibility of drainage wells, well design patterns, design procedure,
maintenance of tubewell.
 Practical / Exercises
1.Determination of Water Table Depth by Different Methods

2.Determination of Hydraulic Head

3.Processing and Interpretation of Groundwater Data

4.Determination of Hydraulic Conductivity by Laboratory Permeameter

5.Determination of Hydraulic Conductivity by Auger Hole Method

6.Surface Drainage Design Exercise

7.Subsurface Drainage Design Exercise

8.Tubewell Drainage Design Exercise

9.A Field Trip to Subsurface Tile Drainage System of Mardan/Swabi SCARP

 Books Recommended:

1) Smedema, L. K. W. F. Vlotman, D. W. Rycroft. 2004. Modern Land Drainage:

Planning, Design and Management of Agricultural Drainage Systems. Taylor &
Francis
2) Micheal, A. M. and A. K. Bhattacharya. 2003. Land Drainage: Principles Methods
and Application. Konark Publishers Pvt Ltd, India.
3) Siddiqui, I. H. 2003. Irrigation and Drainage Engineering. Royal Book Company,
Karachi.
4) Ritzema, H. P. 1994. Drainage Principles and Applications. ILRI Publication 16.
International Institute for Land Reclamation and Improvement, Wageningen,
Netherlands.
 Agricultural Drainage
Definition:
Agricultural Drainage is the removal of excess water
and salts from the root zone or from the land surface in
order to create healthier environment for plant growth
and to make the land suitable for man use.
 Waterlogging
Waterlogging:

An agricultural land is said to be waterlogged when its productivity is affected

by high water table.

Cause of Waterlogging:
 Poor natural drainage
 Seepage from canals and reservoirs
 Over irrigation of fields
 Runoff water from higher to lower areas
 Obstruction of natural drainage
 Effects of Waterlogging:
 Poor aeration
 Inhibiting activity of soil micro-organisms
 Lowering of soil temperature
 Rise of salts
 Delay in cultivation/tillage operations
 Growth of wild flora
 Adverse effect on community health
 Remedial Measures
 Drainage (Surface, subsurface, tubewell)
 Lining of irrigation channels (canals, distys., minors, watercourses)
and reservoirs
 Irrigation according to crop water requirements
 Removing obstruction in natural drainage
 Changes in cropping pattern
 Adoption of high efficiency irrigation systems
 Drainage Objectives
• Water logging control
• Salinity control
• Flood control
• Environmental protection
• Public health and rural sanitation
• Protection of infrastructure
• Rural development and food security
 Waterlogging control:
• In poorly drained waterlogged land, much of the pore space in the
rootzone is occupied by water and as a consequence air is in short
supply.
• Crop growth can generally be improved by draining out the excess
water. This has traditionally been the first and foremost purpose of
drainage.
• Waterlogging also restricts the use of farm machinery and the
efficiency of the involved farm operations and imposes constraints on
the crop choice and farm calendar.
 Salinity control:
• Irrigated lands are becoming salinized due to the accumulation of
excess salts in the rootzone.
• This accumulation is usually due to a combination of insufficient
leaching of the salts imported with the applied irrigation water and
capillary rise of salts from the underlying saline groundwater.
• Although crops differ in their salt tolerance, the growth and yields of
many common crops become severely affected once this accumulation
of salts in the rootzone rises above certain threshold levels.
• To prevent this salt accumulation, it is essential to maintain a
downward drainage flow in the soil by which salts are removed from
the rootzone and the level of the watertable can be controlled.
 Erosion control:
• Loss of topsoil poses a serious threat to the productivity and
sustainability of much agricultural land used in the semi-arid zone as
much land has too little vegetation at the beginning of the rainy
season to protect it against the erosive forces of the intense rain.
• Improved drainage may help to reduce this loss of valuable topsoil
and the flooding of lower areas by checking and controlling the runoff
of rain or other types of excess water and by preventing the runoff
flow from reaching erosive velocities.
 Flood control:
• Drainage problems may not only be caused by local water
sources (rain, seepage, irrigation, etc.) but also by invasion
and inundation by water coming from an outside source.
• While most of the flood control is considered to be outside
the domain of land drainage, some forms of local flooding
may be controlled by regular land drainage.
 Environmental protection:
• Drainage designs should always strive to achieve the above
mentioned agricultural objectives while protecting (preferably
enhancing) the environmental values of the drained area.
 Public health and rural sanitation:
• Improved drainage by restricting the breeding opportunities for the
insect vectors, can significantly contribute to the control of malaria,
filariasis, schistosomiasis and other vector borne water related
diseases.
• Drainage can also help to improve sanitary conditions in areas with
stagnating and polluted water and provide improved drainage
opportunities for villages without an adequate drainage outlet.
 Protection of infrastructure:
• Flooding often disrupts many economic activities but can also cause
considerable direct damage to roads and other infrastructure.
• The rising of the water tables in many irrigated areas affects
trafficability of roads, raises the road maintenance costs, undermines
the foundations of buildings and has led to the collapse of many
(mud-based) houses.
 Rural development and food security:
• The nature and wide range of its objectives and impacts make
drainage a suitable instrument for rural development.
• Drainage has been extensively used for this purpose in the developed
countries during the second half of the 20th century.
• As such, it has greatly contributed to the agricultural development
and rural welfare of backward regions, ultimately contributing to the
national and global food security.
• Drainage could play a similar role in many of the developing countries.
 Integrated Water Resources Management:
Controlled Drainage

• Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is a process that

promotes the coordinated development and management of water,
land and related resources, to maximize economic and social welfare
in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of
vital ecosystems.
• Drainage is a vital part in IWRM.
• Avoid over drainage and undesirable drawdown of water table.
 Water logging Control
Adverse Impacts:
• Impaired Crop Growth
• Under water logged condition, air-filled pore volume fall below
10%, and CO2 may increase to toxic level
• Anaerobic conditions may lead to formation of toxic
concentrations of iron, manganese, sulphides and organic gases
• Effect of water logging depend on duration of water logging, its
timing and growth stage of crop, health of crop, weather
condition.
• Waterlogging of the entire rootzone for a period of two to three days can be fatal
when it occurs during the seedling stage.
• A vigorously growing healthy crop is able to withstand waterlogging better than a
poor one.
• Crops suffer much more from waterlogging under warm than under cold weather
conditions.
• Impaired Farm Operations
• Excess water adversely affects the accessibility of the land and workability of
the soil.
• Improved drainage helps to assure early planting, resulting in more growth-
days and higher yields and those crops can be timely and properly harvested.
 Responses to Improved Drainage
• Aeration conditions in the rootzone are inversely related to the soil water
content of the upper soil layers and since the latter are closely dependent
on the water table depth, this readily determined depth is often used as a
diagnostic index for the prevailing aeration conditions.
• Another commonly used index for the aeration conditions in the
rootzone, is the duration of surface water ponding.
• These two indices may also be considered to be highly indicative of the
prevailing farm operation conditions.
• Available data generally show an improvement in accessibility/workability
conditions with increasing water table depths up to 50–100 cm for light
soils and up to 100–150 cm for heavy soils, then remaining constant.
 Water table Depth Index:
• A strong relationship between the average water table depth and crop
yield as shown in Figure 1.1 can usually only be found when the water
table varies within a narrow depth range.
• Even under more variable water table conditions, fair relationships may
be expected as the average depth often captures some response
significant regime characteristics.
• In temperate climates, different curves are typically found for the
summer and the winter seasons whereby the summer curves reflect the
aeration conditions during the growing season and the winter curves
the adverse impact of off-season waterlogging on the available nitrogen
and on the soil structure.
 Figure 1.1 Crop yield—water table depth
curves for two different soils (Netherlands)
• Crop responses vary with the pattern of the water table regime (the
duration and timing of the high water tables are especially important),
which patterns may to some extent be captured by the Wx and the
SEWx indices (Figure 1.2).
• Good correlations with a range of crop yields were obtained in the UK
for the W40 index and for yields of sugarcane in Australia for the W50
index.
Figure 1.2 Commonly used water table depth indices
• Figure 1.3 shows two cases of similarly good correlations for the SEW30
index.
• The nature of the response shown by these indices depends on the
period to which they apply (winter/off-season indices mostly showing the
adverse impact of high water tables on soil structure while for the
summer/growing season indices this is mostly the impact of oxygen
deficiency).
• In some cases weighted indices were used which took into account the
occurrence of the waterlogging in relation to the development cycle of
the crops, but these have not always proved to be superior to the non-
weighted indices.
Figure 1.4 Relationships between crop yield
and SEW values
 Table 1.2 Percentage yield losses due to surface ponding in Hungary
(after Cziceky 1957)

Days of full J F M A M J J A S O N D
ponding
1. Grasslan                        
d
    3                        
    7       10 15 20 20 10        
    11       20 30 30 20 20        
    15     10 30 50 50 50 30 10      
2. Fodder                        
crop
    3       10 10 10 10 10 10      
    7     10 25 30 40 40 30 30 10    
    11 5 5 20 40 50 70 70 50 50 20 5 5
    15 10 10 30 60 100 100 100 80 70 30 10 10
3. Winter                        
grains
    3     5 10 30 20            
    7 5 5 15 25 40 50       5 5 5
    11 10 10 30 40 70 80 10     10 10 10
    15 15 15 50 70 100 100 20     20 20 20
4. Summer                        
grains
    3     10 15 15 20            
    7     20 40 50 50            
    11     40 75 75 75 10          
    15     100 100 100 100 20          
5. Maize                        
    3       20 10 10            
    7       80 50 40 10 10 10      
    11       100 80 75 50 40 20 10    
    15       100 100 100 80 60 30 10  
 Ponding Indices
• Impacts of ponding on yields is most severe in the spring and
summer when the crops are physiologically most active and
temperatures are higher.
• The damage, even from prolonged ponding, is relatively low
when it occurs during the dormant/winter period.
• Grassland is clearly more tolerant to flooding while almost all
crops are most tolerant at the end of the development cycle
(ripening stage).
Figure 1.5 Yield losses due to surface
ponding
• Yields of most crops start to be affected by only short periods
of ponding (often <1 day) while the 50% yield reduction (Y50%)
for most crops occurs after 5 to 8 days of ponding.

• Most crops are somewhat more sensitive to ponding at the

seedling stage.
 Table 1.3 Yield losses due to surface ponding
(after Gupta et al 1992)
Location Crop D100 (days) Slope D50 (days)
(%/day)
India, Delhi Pigeon pea 1.6 23.2 3.8
  Hisar Cow pea 0.8 6.6 8.4
    Pigeon pea 0.5 9.2 6.0
  Karnal Wheat 0.0 7.0 7.2
    Pearl millet 0.0 5.3 9.4
  Ludhiana Wheat 1.0–1.9 9.2 7.3
  Madhipura Maize 0.0 9.3–14.2 3.5–5.4
  Pusa Groundnut 0.0 8.9–10.3 4.9–5.6
s
    Maize 0.0–1.2 9.4–9.6 3.8–6.4
Venezuela, Merida Potato 0.0 9.0 5.5
    Beets 2.8 10.3 7.7
    Forage 2.1 7.9 8.4
    Sunflower 2.0 7.1 9.0
Water balances and agro-hydrological
conditions
Drainage Systems
 Drainage System

• Field system
• subsurface drainage systems:

• surface/shallow drainage systems:

• Main system

• Outlet
Bio-drainage
 Bio-drainage
• It uses the evapotranspirative capacity of the vegetation to remove the
excess soil water or expressed more popularly: let the vegetation drink
itself out of the waterlogging problem
• This water removal mechanism would not only be of low cost as it would
not require the installation of any physical field facilities and would not
require a disposal system but, on the contrary, may actually yield some
marketable products (fodder, fibre, wood)
• The scope for bio-drainage would seem to be most favourable in the arid
zones where the drainable surpluses are generally quite small in relation
to the evapotranspiration rates (some 1–2 mm/d vs. some 10 mm/d) and
limited evapotranspirative surfaces are able to cope
 Environmental Impacts
• Drainage development can also enhance the environmental values of
the land, but it should be recognized that in some cases it has harmed
the environment.
• Artificial drainage alters the processes and the pathways by which
excess water is removed from the land and is disposed off.
• Although these interventions are generally to the benefit of the land
from where the drainage water originates (generally the upstream
areas), they may be to the detriment of the land and water bodies
where the drainage water is discharged (generally the downstream
areas).
 Stream Flow Regimes
• Improved surface drainage will generally lead to an increase in the
rate of field discharge while improved subsurface drainage, depending
on prevailing conditions (rainfall intensity, antecedent rainfall, season,
land use, etc.) may increase as well as decrease these rates.
• Downstream areas may become exposed to greater flood risks.
• Natural ecological conditions and terrestrial and aquatic life in the
stream bed and in the riparian land will adapt to the new regimes and
biodiversity may be lost.
• The river works may also lead to loss of scenic values.
 Water Quality
• The disposal of nutrient rich drainage water, exceeding the natural
assimilation capacities of the receiving waters, has led to some large-scale
eutrophication of rivers, lakes and estuaries (typically manifested by
excessive growth of phytoplankton, algae and duckweed).
• Drainage induced disposal of (remnants) of pesticides and herbicides has
also led to the toxification of the receiving waters but this is only likely to
occur when the toxic elements can become concentrated (as may occur in
lakes, bays, lagoons, marshes and other water bodies with limited
through flow).
• Salinity originating from natural geological formations, or intrusion from
the sea and salinity induced by irrigation practices, affects water quality.
 Wetlands and Drainage
• Wetlands are naturally waterlogged lands, which generally play an important
regulating hydrological function as well as constituting valuable natural habitats.
• Depending on the local site conditions and on the amassed volume, the incoming
water is retained or it overflows to neighbouring wetlands and/or to nearby
outfalls.
• In the process, it attenuates the discharge hydrographs of the regional streams
and rivers.
• The storage/retention potential of the area is considerably reduced when
wetlands are reclaimed for agricultural use.
• This has been confirmed by experiences in some basins in the USA where
wetland reclamation has resulted in 30–50% increases in peak flows.
 Important functions of Wetlands
• Reclamation and drainage of wetland areas also affect the groundwater hydrology in the
region.
• Wetlands set the regional drainage base and lowering of this base may be expected to lead
to a general drawdown of the water tables in the surrounding areas.
• Wetlands also recharge water tables, feed local springs and augment the low flows of local
streams.
• Overall, the hydrological regime in and around the area would become drier and the ecology
of the regions would adjust accordingly.
• Wetlands also have an important filtering, water purification and sediment trapping function.
• Drainage and development of the wetlands for agriculture would largely eliminate these
important functions, which may be expected to have an adverse effect on the water quality
in the region.
 Conservation Drainage / Controlled
Drainage
• Conservation drainage applies to cases where regular agricultural drainage
would create too dry a hydrological regime.
• Regular drainage may e.g., lead to insufficient recharge of the groundwater
in areas of potable water abstraction.
• In areas where lower lying agricultural land occurs interspersed with higher
lying forest land, regular drainage would cause the agricultural land to
become sinks and water tables in the forest areas to fall too deep for the
trees to survive.
• In all these cases, controlled drainage should be applied which ensures that
the installed drainage will not provide over-drainage i.e., does not remove
too much water and does not cause water tables to fall unnecessarily deep.
Waterlogging and Salinity Problems in Pakistan
Table 1.1 Province-wise salt-affected and waterlogged area of Pakistan
Province Total Area Saline Area Poorly Drained
(000 acres) Soil 1/

----------(% of the total area)---------

Khyber 1516 12 18
Pakhtunkhwa
 
Punjab 25119 14 18
 
Sindh 13785 47 30
 
Baluchistan 873 26 7
 
Total 41293 25 22
 

1/
Watertable from 0-2 m (0-6 ft)