Journal of Water Harvesting Research
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Summer and Autumn 2016

The world has a long experience of using harvested rainwater from rooftop catchments in urbanized regions. There are also many studies about the technical, health, and environmental details of such systems. The gradual prevalence of rainwater harvesting systems in the country exposes a necessity to determine and define some guidelines and instructions for health and environmental considerations of these systems. Therefore, this study was aimed at introducing some existing health and environmental instructions regarding extracted water from rooftop catchments for drinking purposes in Aq Ghala, Golestan province, Iran. Results revealed that water samples had a good physical and chemical quality for drinking purposes which was established by another work in Golestan province with 140 samples’ analysis. This work confirms that there is a need to prepare health and environmental instructions for rooftop catchment systems before developing them.

In current situations, quantitative and qualitative reduction of water resources has become global crisis. This subject has created many problems in Iran’s agriculture sector. In this research, effective factors on participation rate of farmers in Hashtgerd regarding optimum Utilization of irrigation networks are studied. The statistical population included all 1500 farmers in Hashtgerd city. A total of 306 farmers were studied using Morgan table method. Internal and external validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by experts. Reliability was measured by using Bayesian Cronbach’s alpha (max = 95%; min =78%) as estimated by R codes. Results show that there is a significant relationship among social participation, technical knowledge, social confidence, and instructive variables in the 1% level of confidence and between education, governmental support, informing, and modern irrigation methods in the 5% level with participation rate of farmers in optimum utilization of irrigation network. Also, social participation, technical knowledge, social confidence and instructive variables, education, governmental support, informing, and modern irrigation methods were entered in multivariable regression using Step-Wise method, which finally resulted in 46% of variable changes regarding these seven factors. The results of the regression indicated that the two variables, namely educational factors and History of Membership in Water User Associations (x2) are the most important predictors of Farmers’ Participation rate in Water Optimum Utilization.

So far, various methods have been presented for determining reference crop evapotranspiration in different parts of the world. The most popular and prestigious of them are probably the combined methods of Penman family, modified Blany-Criddle, Hargreaves - Samani and thornthwaite. Due to lack of lysimeter data in many parts of Iran, presenting an equation according to the regional condition with high precision is very paramount. The purpose of this paper is to present a method with higher precision for determining the evapotranspiration of sugar beet by using the meteorology and GDD (Growing Degree Day) parameters in Torbat_Jam, Iran. Determined methods were evaluated with FAO- Penman- Monteith method as a standard model. RMSE, R2 and Nash-Sutcliffe, and NS indexes were used for comparing fitness indexes. Results showed that equation 4 is appropriate for calculating crop water requirements, also R2, RMSE, and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient were 0.683, 1.117 and 0.99, for equation 4, respectively.

This study deals with the transport behavior of the coarse-sediment at Masudagawa flood mitigation dam (FMD), Japan. Radio frequency identification system (RFID) was used to trace the displacement of the IC tagged particles following major flood events since June 2011. Through this, the relationship between recovery rate of the tagged particles and distribution of shear stress over the FMD bed was investigated. Moreover, this study attempts to provide a primary concept for sediment transport processes within the FMDs and to identify a linkage between governing morphological characteristics within the FMD and the transport behavior of coarse-sediment. This study shows that recovery rate of the RFID tagged particles is closely associated with hydro-morphological characteristics of each sub-zone upstream of FMDs. The upstream retention area of Masu-dagawa FMD was classified into three hydro-morphological regions. It was found that the characteristics of tractive force during a flood event within these three regions are different, resulting in transport behavior of the coarse-sediment. In addition, it was found that a small flood event may cause a larger volume of sediment deposition within the FMD compared to a major flood event.

Infiltration phenomenon, has a direct impact on rainwater harvesting in fields under irrigation. In order to solve this problem (reduced infiltration and increased runoff), a few strategies can be suggested. Taking long-term decision for increasing the efficiency of irrigation should be strongly suggested. At the same time, ways in which customized irrigation is optimized must be studied. An old irrigation method has been used in large scale in Iranian furrow irrigation. Different design methods for furrow irrigation are offered; the most important ones are: 1- SCS (Soil Conservation Service) method; 2- FAO method; and 3- walker and Skogerbo method. The present study offers a design method that is suited according to environmental conditions and discusses the results obtained from this study. Attempts were made to identify the efficient length of furrow. A study field in Amirabad farm of college of Agriculture at Birjand University was selected. Preparation and leveling of the field was done, since furrow irrigation of the slope gradient for land leveling is very important. This research focused on soil infiltration (Double ring and input - output methods), advance time and recession time, and measuring furrow cross section in different steps during the study. Results showed the possibility of improving water use efficiency using furrow irrigation technique. Finally, it was concluded that using SCS is more consistent with methods of rain water harvesting and on-farm water efficiency.

The unmanaged groundwater extraction and inadequate aquifer recharge is the major cause of groundwater depletion in different parts of the world. In this study, the groundwater flow system of Mahvelat-Feizabad aquifer (NE of Iran) has been numerically simulated using MODFLOW code in the GMS interface. The model, primarily, calibrated for steady state condition for the mean hydraulic values of one-year period (Sep. 2012 to Sep. 2013) which has steady condition with low stresses on aquifer. Then the model is run/calibrated for transient condition for one year period (Sep. 2012 to Sep. 2013). After determining the hydraulic properties of the aquifer and confirming their validity, different scenarios were applied to the model. Results show that, by continuing the current aquifer conditions, there will be a constant decrease in water level with the approximate rate of 0.8 m/year. Changing the exploitation of water from critical zone and overexploitation from saline water zone will affect the critical zone by causing a sharp decline in water level as well as its affection in water quality parameters that directly affect the agriculture of this area. Results show that proper management of aquifer can affect the groundwater flow direction and extent of saline water zone. In addition, artificial recharge which contain direct and indirect technique such as percolation tank and injection well and spreading channel are all the preventative measures to overcome the expansion of saline water zone.