Agricultural Water Management (Aug 2023)
Dependence of evapotranspiration validity on shallow groundwater in arid area-a three years field observation experiment
Abstract
Groundwater resources strongly support crop water requirement and economic yield improvement in semi-arid and arid areas. Water resources management require more investigation in the response of evapotranspiration (ET) partitioning and water use efficiency to groundwater change. Observational data collected over a three-year period, including water and carbon flux, vegetable sap flow, meteorological factors, soil water content, and groundwater depth, were employed in this study. Additionally, an improved Shuttleworth-Wallace model was used for partitioning plant transpiration and bare soil evaporation (E) in a sunflower cropland with shallow groundwater. The ET of the sunflower was founded to be 353.5 ± 15.0 mm, and approximately 48.3 ± 7.4% derived from the groundwater evaporation. E amounted approximately 145.6 ± 6.1 mm over the growth season, and around 47.2% of which was lost during the seeding stage. Furthermore, its dynamics depended on crop growth and groundwater table depth (WTD). These large amounts of non-productive soil E had a negative impact on the water-carbon coupling. The presence of E had resulted in a lower ecosystem water use efficiency (WUEe), measured at 1.02 ± 0.33 g C kg−1 H2O, compared to canopy water use efficiency (WUEc) of 1.68 ± 0.41 g C kg−1 H2O. These results demonstrated that regulating WTD could improve WUEe by increasing WUEc and reducing soil E. To achieve the higher WUEe, an optimum WTD was range of 1.5–2.0 m for border-irrigated sunflower field grown on sandy loam, identified by an analysis of normalized evaporation difference at the varying WTD. This finding highlights the significance of maintaining specified WTD, providing valuable insights into the complex interplay between crop evapotranspiration components and shallow groundwater. Moreover, it offers guidance for precision agriculture irrigation practices.
