Journal of Water and Land Development

The paper characterizes the status, trends and perspectives of irrigation in Poland after the reforms in agriculture and technology. Irrigation in Poland has supplemental character. It is used in short periods during the growing season and plays an important role in mitigating the effects of drought on crop production. Sub-irrigation from ditches is applied on permanent grasslands, sprin-kling – in field cultivation of arable crops, sprinkling and drip irrigation – in vegetable growing in open areas, micro-jets and drip irrigation systems – in orchards. Drip irrigation and micro-jets sys-tems are also applied in plant cultivation in greenhouses.

Under the economic conditions of Polish agriculture irrigation is often an unprofitable measure. The existing irrigation systems and facilities are only used to a small extent. After changes in the forms of ownership in agriculture, the large-area sprinkling systems were degraded. Small irrigation systems, mainly drip irrigation and micro-sprinkler irrigation, have recently become more common in private farms. Sub-irrigation systems are largely degraded and used only to a small extent if at all. In order to use these systems more effectively, it is necessary to reconstruct and modernize them. In many cases the factor preventing the use of irrigation systems is the deficit of water of required qual-ity and its availability. Besides unfavourable economic conditions, it is one of the main limitations in the development of irrigation in Poland.

The study presents the critical evaluation of existing drainage systems from legal, eco-nomical, environmental and technical viewpoints. Nearly 80% of agricultural land in Lithuania drained by underground drainage systems covers around 3 million hectares. The prevailing large scale drainage systems with a complex of engineering structures such as conducting ditches, drains and collectors, local roads, bridges or farm road-crossings, dikes, dams, water reservoirs, pumping stations for irrigation and for drainage need today an efficient management solution in a new economic situation. The detailed analysis of legal and economic instruments adopted in transferring the management responsibilities of drainage systems to users has been carried out. The study resulted in a number of practical contributions towards the amendments in the Law on Land Reclamation in Lithuania and the establishment of a system of indicators that would allow rationalisation of subsidy allocations for the maintenance and improvement of the drainage systems. These subsidies from the state budget make at the moment the largest share among the investment sources. The financial and in kind contribution of drainage users is permanently increasing as are the allocations of the structural funds for public projects. The EU pre-accession programme SAPARD started in 2000 has supported some investments in rural areas. Unfortunately, it did not support the drainage infrastructure properly. A critical review of previous measures allowed suggesting new actions within the framework of the actual support from EU structural funds.

In order to maintain and improve water quality, man has an increasing need to understand the relations among basin land use and in stream water quality. Being concerned about quality and quantity status of European waters European Union has adopted Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EU). The process of pressure and impact analyses and water status assessment is termed, in short, as “first characterisation” of water bodies. In accordance to WFD programmes of measures have to be developed by 2009. In WFD programmes existing measures for water protection directed by other EU directives such are Nitrate, Urban Waste Water, Dangerous Substances and IPPC will be further developed and new added. In the paper, we describe the first characterisation of the Slovene waters and show cross compliance of the Nitrate and Water Framework Directives in Slovenia

Flooding in the northern part of The Netherlands has caused serious economic threats to densely populated areas. Therefore a project has been carried out in a pilot area to assess the retention of water in two river basins as a way to reduce flooding. The physically-based groundwater and sur-face water model SIMGRO was used to model the hydrology of the basins. The model was calibrated using discharges and groundwater levels. Scenarios of measures to assess the possibility of retaining water in the basin were then defined and tested. The first measure was the retention of higher dis-charges using culverts or gates in the upstream part of the basin. The second measure was to make the streams shallower and thereby, increase flood plain storage. The last measure was flood water storage in a designated area in the downstream part of one basin. The analysis indicates that holding water in the upstream parts of the basins proved to be feasible and can result in significant reductions of peak flows.

The very wet conditions of recent years in Europe have made it clear that measures will have to be taken in this century to prevent flooding. The question is how to manage groundwater in order to reduce the anticipated increased hydrological risk. Furthermore the surface water quality in the Netherlands is insufficient to meet the standards of the Water Framework Directive. The required improvements are difficult to reach, because the diffuse loads of nutrients from agricultural land can not be easily reduced. This demands for innovative solutions with respect to improve the surface wa-ter quality. In this pilot study the focus is on the purification in reed fields and use it as well to reduce the effects of the anticipated climate change. An experimental evidence on a practical scale is lacking and therefore in the woodland area of Lankheet in the eastern part of the Netherlands, 3 ha has been planted with reeds to purify the river water. The aim of the study is further to store the purified water in the groundwater in order to reduce climate change effects. For the hydrological situation a scenario study was set up, using a regional hydrological model to simulate the groundwater flow together with the water flow in a network of water courses. The analysis will give knowledge on the multifunc-tional use of such a system.

The relative relationships “yield – evapotranspiration” were used long time ago. The well known linear relationship yi = 1 – ky (1 – ei), where yi is relative yield, ky – yield response factor and ei – relative evapotranspiration was proposed. It’s usually assumed that ky is constant for a given crop and climatic conditions. It was found, however, that ky for late variety of maize H 708 varied through the study years (1984–1990) in the Plovdiv region (South Bulgaria, altitude 150 m). During the dry years it was significantly higher than in the medium and humid years. The range of ky for maize in this location was 1.12–1.90, the average value being 1.50. The climate in the Sofia region (the ex-perimental field of Chelopechene, altitude 550 m) is comparatively more humid. The two regions approximately outlined the boundaries of the appropriate economical conditions for grain maize pro-duction. The experiments in the Sofia region were carried out in the years 1994–2000. The seven years results for mean variety maize showed that the relationships “yield – evapotranspiration” and, respectively, ky varied at these climatic conditions too. The highest ky value was 1.41 for the driest year (2000) and the lowest value – 1.05 for the most wet years (1995, 1999). The value of ky for av-erage years was 1.21. The yield response factor ky is of more significance when the relative evapotranspiration is less than 0.7–0.8. Thus, the extreme or the average values of ky could be used for the corresponding climatic regions. The relationships between ky and relative yield were estab-lished without considering irrigation.

Water is a sensitive and limited resource, mainly in intensively used agricultural areas in Austria, where groundwater is used as drinking water as well as for irrigation purposes. In order to guarantee a sustainable use of irrigation water, soil water measurement devices can be used to opti-mise irrigation, which means that controlling the soil water content in the entire root system may prevent water stress due to water deficiency on the one hand, and over wetting on the other hand. Furthermore, losses of nutrients due to leaching can be avoided. Several research studies on that topic were initiated during the last few years. The soil water status on selected fields planted with different crops (onions, carrots, sugar beets, sweet maize, zucchini) was monitored continuously by FDR (Fre-quency Domain Reflectometry) soil water measurement devices. Sensors in different depths measure the plant water uptake in the root zone under standard irrigation practices on different sites and dif-ferent soils, respectively. The deepest sensor is installed to avoid deep percolation caused by over irrigation. By means of these data, irrigation could be regulated based on the actual plant water re-quirements to keep the soil water content within an ideal range for crop development.

The objective of the study was to characterise the quality of surface waters in order to de-termine their vulnerability to pollution by nitrogen compounds from agricultural activity, as well as to specify the areas with increased exposure, where nitrogen runoff from agricultural sources has to be reduced. It was necessary to determine surface waters liable to pollution by these compounds due to the fact that agricultural production should be carried out in the way which limits and prevents water pollution by nitrogen compounds of agricultural origin. The study addressed the following is-sues: the concentration of nitrogen compounds in the surface waters of the Middle Odra Basin, and the extent of eutrophication in flowing inland waters (with nitrogen as the main nutrient). The results have been plotted in figures and gathered in tables.

No adequate reaction has been observed of the decreased contaminant loads discharged by Łódź, particularly the loads of phosphorus, on its concentration in the Ner River. That’s why the im-pact of sediment on phosphorus content in the water was evaluated. Not only was the amount of phosphorus taken under consideration but also the equilibrium phosphate concentration (EPCo). The meaning of EPCo is that any phosphate concentration in the water below this value will lead to phos-phorus release from sediments. Performed study shows that in the Puczniew cross-section EPCo is higher then phosphorus concentration in water, thus with mean concentration of PO4 equal to 9.5 mg PO4·dm–3 phosphorus could be released from sediments. This concentration in Lutomiersk cross-section, however, equals 1.2 mg PO4·dm–3.

There are 40 coal mines in Poland now. One of them (coal mine “Bogdanka”) is situated in Lublin Coal Basin, other are localised in Silesia and Małopolska regions. Coal mining is a source of large amounts of wastes. Mean annual production of wastes in only Lublin Coal Basin exceeds 2 million Mg, 65% of which is disposed on a heap. The rest is used to restore opencast excavations, to construct and repair local roads and to produce building materials. It seems that large amount of these wastes could be used to construct or modernize flood embankments and dykes. Using mine wastes as building materials requires the knowledge of their geotechnical parameters. A characteristic feature of mine wastes is their gradual weathering which affects geotechnical parameters largely determined by their mineral and petrographic composition.

This paper describes analyses of geotechnical parameters of mine wastes from Lublin Coal Basin (heap near coal mine “Bogdanka”) of various storage times and of samples collected after 10 years of exploitation of a dyke between ponds made of these wastes at the break of 1993 and 1994. Detailed analyses involved: grain size distribution, natural and optimum moisture content, maximum dry den-sity, shear strength and coefficient of permeability. Obtained results were compared with literature data pertaining to mine wastes from Upper Silesian Coal Basin and from other European coal basins.

Performed studies showed that coal mining wastes produced in Lublin Coal Basin significantly differed in the grain size distribution from wastes originating from Upper Silesian Coal Basin and that weathering proceeded in a different way in wastes produced in both sites.