| Abstract: | In an irrigation management problem, decisions are made at various levels for assessment of water availability and requirements, proposing the type of irrigation scheduling, and deriving an actual operational policy for various crop scenarios. In this study, a plan was developed for water management. A general strategy for planning and application of irrigation management was proposed. Since the Penman method was used, the focus was on a synthetic study involving basic project situations, relevant data, water requirement calculation, irrigation scheduling, and discussion on optimizing water use efficiency in the steppe and irrigated crop production ecosystems. Effective use of tabular displays made interpreting and analyzing results easier. Based on the statistical analysis between spring wheat water availability and water requirement, a new type of index called water niche suitability was proposed. The particular type of irrigation scheduling was based on this index together with concrete situation of irrigated areas. The research showed that there are great potentiality of water resources in optimizing Ningxia irrigation management. The irrigation scheduling in this paper was found to be reasonable and demonstrated that results could be used to assist in improving water management decisions in the northwestern China. |
