Temporal and Local Heterogeneities of Water Table Depth under Different Agricultural Water Management Conditions

Abstract

Integrated water management has become a priority for cropping systems where subirrigation is possible. Compared to conventional sprinkler irrigation, the controlling water table can lead to a substantial increase in yield and water use efficiency with less pumping energy requirements. Knowing the spatiotemporal distribution of water table depth (WTD) and soil properties should help perform intelligent, integrated water management. Observation wells were installed in cranberry fields with different water management systems: Bottom, with good drainage and controlled WTD management; Surface, with good drainage and sprinkler irrigation management; Natural, without drainage, or with imperfectly drained and conventional sprinkler irrigation. During the 2017–2020 growing seasons, WTD was monitored on an hourly basis, while precipitation was measured at each site. Multi-frequential periodogram analysis revealed a dominant periodic component of 40 days each year in WTD fluctuations for the Bottom and Surface systems; for the Natural system, periodicity was heterogeneous and ranged from 2 to 6 weeks. Temporal cross correlations with precipitation show that for almost all the sites, there is a 3 to 9 h lag before WTD rises; one exception is a subirrigation site. These results indicate that automatic water table management based on continuously updated knowledge could contribute to integrated water management systems, by using precipitation-based models to predict WTD.