The dynamics of groundwater table and salinity over 17 years in Khorezm

Mirzakhayot Ibrakhimov, Christopher Martius, J.P.A. Lamers and Bernhard Tischbein

Agricultural Water Management, 2011, vol. 101, issue 1, 52-61

Abstract: Salinization of irrigated agricultural land threatens ecological sustainability and livelihoods of people. Salinization is especially severe in the dry lowlands world-wide and in Central Asia where large amounts of salts accumulated in the soil profile, originating from shallow saline groundwater (GW). Analysis of the unique dataset of 2000 monitoring wells of GW table and salinity in lowland Khorezm region of Uzbekistan over the period of 1990 till 2006 showed shallow GW levels of 1.1–1.4m (±0.48–0.66m) at start of leaching periods and 0.9–1.4 (±0.43–0.63m) in July during the annual growing seasons. While leaching efficiency is decreased, shallow GW in July is far above the optimum levels of 1.4–1.5m. The effects of topography, soil texture, and irrigation and drainage networks were found to favor shallow GW forced by excessive water diversion. The drainage network, which is seen by many specialists as underdeveloped and its improvement necessary to arrest unacceptable GW levels, is being used under its full capacity. The solution to alleviate land degradation is not only an improved drainage, but better controlled and more flexible water management.

Keywords: Central Asia; Drainage; Irrigated agriculture; Soil salinization; Uzbekistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377411002435
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:101:y:2011:i:1:p:52-61

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2011.09.002

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().