Controlled drainage with subirrigation: automatic control to manage freshwater use

“Climate change, weather extremes, economic growth, urbanization and increased food production, among other things, is making it more complex to guarantee sufficient fresh water in agricultural and economic sectors. Historically, the Dutch agricultural water management focused on water discharge, which makes it now more vulnerable to droughts. A change is needed to anticipate both wet and dry extremes.
Current pipe drainage systems (existing in 34 % of the agricultural fields), installed to discharge water could be modified to systems to retain and recharge water too. Doing so, so called controlled drainage with subirrigation (CD-SI) systems could be a viable measure to i) discharge water only when needed and ii) retain and iii) recharge water when possible.”

(Citation: de Wit, J.A., van Huijgevoort, M.H.J., van Dam, J.C., et.al. – Controlled drainage with subirrigation: automatic control to manage freshwater use – Congress Abstract – Nederlands Aardwetenschappelijk Congres 2024 (NAC), 8 March 2024)