Nitrogen balance in agroecosystems provides a quantitative framework of N inputs and outputs and retention in the soil that examines the sustainability of agricultural productivity and soil and environmental quality. Nitrogen inputs include N additions from manures and fertilizers, atmospheric depositions including wet and dry depositions, irrigation water, and biological N fixation. Nitrogen o...

To compare the soil water balance, yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of spring maize under different mulching types in the Loess Plateau, a 7-year field experiment was conducted in the Changwu region of the Loess Plateau. Three treatments were used in this experiment: straw mulch (SM), plastic film mulch (PM) and conventional covering without mulch (CK). Results show that the soil water chan...

During three consecutive years (1991-93), a field experiment was conducted in 3n intensively irrigated agricultural sail in SW Spain. The maio objective of tbis study was to determine the water flow and nitrate leaching below tbe root zone~ under an irrigated maize crop and after the growing season (bare soil and rainy periad). The experiment was carried out on a furrow irrigated maize crop usi...

A field crop irrigation management decision-making system (CropIrri) was developed based on the soil water balance model, crop phenology model, root growth model, crop water production function, and irrigation management model. The irrigation plan is made through predicating of soil water content in root zone and daily crop water requirement using historical and forecasting weather data, measur...

The rise in water demand for agriculture, industry, domestic, and environmental needs requires sagacious use of this limited resource. Since agriculture (mainly irrigation) is the major user of water, improving agricultural water management is essential. Efficient agricultural water management requires reliable estimation of crop water requirement (evapotranspiration). Evapotranspiration (ET) i...

BACKGROUND Field-scale changes in the water footprint during crop growth play an important role in formulating sustainable water utilisation strategies. This study aimed to explore field-scale variation in the water footprint of growing sunflowers in the western Jilin Province, China, during a 3-year field experiment. The goals of this study were to (1) determine the components of the 'blue' an...

The level of land consumption for housing and transport contrasts sharply with both the necessity and the legal obligation to maintain the ecological potential afforded by open spaces to meet the needs of current and future generations in terms of resource protection and climate change. Owing to the increasing intensity of soil usage, in many urban landscapes the soil conditions has deteriorate...

Some essential features of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle and ecosystem response are singled out by confronting empirical observations of the soil water balance of different ecosystems with the results of a stochastic model of soil moisture dynamics. The simplified framework analytically describes how hydroclimatic variability (especially the frequency and amount of rainfall events) concurs w...

[1] We analyze the propagation of daily fluctuations in rainfall and potential evapotranspiration to soil moisture dynamics, using a stochastic model that accounts for these two different forms of hydroclimatic variability. The pulsing, intermittent behavior of daily precipitation is described by a compound Poisson process that models the unpredictability of both frequency and amount of rainfal...

The water balance equation dictates that streamflow may be reduced by transpiration. Yet temporal disequilibrium weakens the relationship between transpiration and streamflow in many cases where inputs and outputs are unbalanced. We address two critical knowledge barriers in ecohydrology with respect to time, scale dependence and lags. Study objectives were to correlate components of the water ...