Assessment of the environmental risks associated with higher irrigation water supplies and finding out management option

Where Irrigation ensures better crop production in Pakistan's arid to semi-arid climate on one hand, it creates serious problems if practiced injudiciously, on the other. Currently, poor water management practices prevail everywhere in the irrigated agriculture of Pakistan. These practices cause many agro-environmental problems water supplied for irrigation purposes is used injudiciously which come up in the form of water logging. A study was carried out from April 2004 to April 2005 for monitoring the effects of higher irrigation supplies a irrigation water use on the groundwater level fluctuations. The water table data was recorded on fortnightly basis for a period of one year. The spatio-temporal variations in the water table were studied in detail. Results show that there is a rising trend in the water table with some seasonal fluctuations, which were caused by frequent irrigation applications, rainfall and high delta crops cultivation like hybrid maize, sugarcane and tobacco. Management options have been proposed for controlling water table rise using the results from of the prim, data collected in the field. (author)