Estimation of Groundwater Usage for Water Curtain Cultivation using a Rating Curve

A method is proposed to estimate groundwater usage for water curtain cultivation (WCC) using a rating curve, and it is applied to field measurements of groundwater discharge used for WCC in Wangjeon-ri, Nonsan. During the winter season, the hydraulic components of irrigation ditches in the study area consist mainly of direct run-off and groundwater discharged from nearby pumping wells. Changes in stage of the ditches were monitored, and a baseflow separation method was applied to remove increments in stage due to direct run-off. The resulting records of stage were translated to groundwater discharge by applying the-stage-discharge relation. The estimated average groundwater discharge for the WCC in Wangjeon-ri was 10,900 m3/d or 420 m3/d/ha when the estimation is normalized by the total area for WCC facilities of this region. Applying this estimation (420 m3/d/ha) to the entire area of the WCC in Korea (10,746 ha),and considering the number of pumping days for the WCC (120 days/year), the total ground water usage for the WCC nation-wide is estimated to be 0.54 billion m3. This is equivalent to 32% of the total groundwater discharge for agricultural use in Korea (1.7 billon m3).