Hydroecological functions of existing drainage systems

Annotation

This part of the research programme is focused on specific water management measures in small catchments such as tile drainage systems, ditches and drainage canals (both open and put into large-diameter tubes) and the adjoined structures on small streams. These measures and structures enjoyed in the past considerable attention and extensive investments. As a result more than one quarter of Czech agricultural land was tile-drained, 12 700 km of drainage canals were built and 15 900 km of smalls streams were fortified and straightened. Despite of fundamental changes in both ownership structure and economic conditions, the hydrological role of drainage systems remains to be an issue of concern with new legislation to be applied and more strict environmental constraint to be imposed on water management.

The research results and experience gathered during the past era of building drainage systems will be taken up and developed further, using contemporary knowledge and automated computational technologies, such as GIS tools and hydrological models. Non-agricultural aspects will be taken into account. The research will rely on the national databases of drainage systems in the Public Administration Information System (the part in the domain of the Ministry of Agriculture) and will exploit the results of long-term, still ongoing observations in experimental sites and catchments of the Research Institute for Soil and Water Conservation.

The objective is to propose and validate procedures for an adequate description of how the existing drainage systems on agricultural lands function, with emphasis on links between the tile drain systems and the hydrographical network (canals and stream) and on the interactions of drainage systems with other components of the hydrosphere and the environment in general. Beside quantitative aspects, the analysis will also focus on the effect of drainage systems on the quality of surface and subsurface waters.

Keyword

drainage, drainage outflow, hydrology, hydraulics, water quality, geografic information systems, simulation modelling