Evaluating the impacts of crop rotations on groundwater storage and recharge in an agricultural watershed

摘要: Abstract The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, which underlies the Big Sunflower Watershed (BSRW), is most heavily used aquifer in Mississippi. Because primarily for irrigating crops such as corn, cotton, soybean, and rice, water levels have been declining rapidly over past few decades. objectives of this study are to analyze relationship interactions between evapotranspiration groundwater recharge rates BSRW, model effects various crop rotation practices on storage recharge. performed well during calibration period (R2 = 0.53–0.68 NSE = 0.49–0.66) validation (R2 = 0.55–0.75 NSE = 0.49–0.72) daily streamflow, was achieved by SUFI-2 auto-calibration algorithm SWAT-CUP package. also simulating seasonal table depth fluctuations (R2 = 0.76 NSE = 0.71) (R2 = 0.86 NSE = 0.79). This demonstrated a BSRW SWAT model. In general, decreased summer months while ET were high, increased winter spring when low. scenarios that include rice planting resulted lowest (down −10.7%) compared baseline scenario, due high irrigation crop. However, rotations highest increases (up +60.1%), likely because response deficiency needed limited uptake with corn cotton largest +27.2%), result low short time applications. results expected aid farmers watershed managers conserve resources, but still maintain production.