Investigation on water delivery performance and its quantification in large-scale Beni Amir irrigation scheme, Morocco

Abstract

In many arid regions of the world, irrigated agriculture is the dominant water user. Monitoring irrigation system performance and improving water use efficiency are integral to sustainable water management due to increasing water demands for agriculture and other sectors under limited water resources and climate change conditions. Morocco is a country that severely affects current and future water scarcity. This study investigated the planning and management of water delivery practices and assessed the water delivery performance (WDP) of the Beni Amir irrigation scheme of about 34,000 ha in Morocco. WDP was evaluated at the lateral canal level in terms of adequacy, dependability, and equity. There are 14 lateral canals in the scheme, and they were categorized into 3 parts: head, middle, and tail. The data on climate and crops, such as cropping areas and patterns, were used to calculate irrigation water requirements for 2016, 2017, and 2018. We collected the daily discharge of each lateral canal and irrigation time for each field to calculate the monthly water supply to all fields. These calculations were aggregated on 10-day intervals based on irrigation frequency and the performance indicators were calculated. The water delivery performance: adequacy, dependability, and equity, were evaluated as fair and poor in all years. However, the dependability of water distribution to farmers is not as low as expressed in the indicator.