Assessment of Alternative Agricultural Land Use Options for Extending the Availability of the Ogallala Aquifer in the Northern High Plains of Texas

Authors

Yong Chen, Texas A&M UniversityFollow
Gary W. Marek, USDA-ARS Conservation and Production Research LaboratoryFollow
Thomas H. Marek, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension CenteFollow
Jerry E. Moorhead, West Texas A&M UniversityFollow
Kevin R. Heflin, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension CenterFollow
David K. Brauer, USDA-ARS Conservation and Production Research LaboratoryFollow
Prasanna H. Gowda, USDA-ARSFollow
Raghavan Srinivasan, Texas A&M UniversityFollow

ORCID IDs

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1196-1942

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9666-364X

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8375-6038

Date of this Version

9-26-2018

Citation

2018 by the authors.

Comments

Hydrology 2018, 5, 53; doi:10.3390/hydrology5040053 www.mdpi.com/journal/hydrology

Abstract

The Ogallala Aquifer has experienced a continuous decline in water levels due to decades of irrigation pumping with minimal recharge. Corn is one of the major irrigated crops in the semi-arid Northern High Plains (NHP) of Texas. Selection of less water-intensive crops may provide opportunities for groundwater conservation. Modeling the long-term hydrologic impacts of alternative crops can be a time-saving and cost-effective alternative to field-based experiments. A newly developed management allowed depletion (MAD) irrigation scheduling algorithm for Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used in this study. The impacts of irrigated farming, dryland farming, and continuous fallow on water conservation were evaluated. Results indicated that simulated irrigation, evapotranspiration, and crop yield were representative of the measured data. Approximately 19%, 21%, and 32% reductions in annual groundwater uses were associated with irrigated soybean, sunflower, and sorghum, respectively, as compared to irrigated corn. On average, annual soil water depletion was more than 52 mm for dryland farming scenarios. In contrast, only 18 mm of soil water was lost to evaporation annually, for the long-term continuous fallow simulation. The fallow scenario also showed 31 mm of percolation for aquifer recharge.