Land Engineering and Water Management

On successful completion of this course you will be able to:

• Estimate crop water requirements and soil water deficits in different environments
• Calculate leaching requirements for saline and sodic soil conditions
• Calculate run off and yield for catchment
• Design channels/ waterways and simple hydraulic structures
• Explain the concept of land capability and carry out land capability classification
• Calculate the stability of slopes and design of simple support
• Design, specify, handling soil and set out earthworks for landforming, landscaping and water storage
• Design appropriate water table control systems for drainage and sub irrigation
• Specify appropriate machinery and mechanisation for drainage installation and maintenance.

• Managing plant and soil water status through estimates of crop water requirements; development of field water budget. Evapotranspiration, drainage, runoff, seepage, soil water storage, and capillary rise
• Crop responses to salinity and sodicity; management of saline and sodic soils; the leaching process
• Hydrology; peak and catchment yield, design of run off
• Hydraulics calculation of channel discharge capacity using Manning’s Equation (and others). The design of channels, waterways weirs, spillways, culverts and control structures
• Slope stability; mechanisms of slope failure. The stability of shallow slope failures, Taylor’s stability numbers
• Landscape design, land forming, earth moving and landscape modification. Top and sub soil management and vegetation establishment. Design of earth embankment storage dams
• Concept of land capability and land quality, criteria used for assessing land capability and its classification. USDA scheme, Canadian Land Inventory
• Drainage; drainage machinery selection and performance, types of drainage problems and their recognition. Design for water table control: use of Hooghoudt and Glover Dumm equations and the Ernst equation for sub irrigation design; the Miers approach; practical issues of drainage design: selection of materials, drainage maintenance, pipe surround, backfill and pipe sizing.