Impact of improved operation and maintenance on cohesive sediment transport in Gezira Scheme, Sudan

Summary Efficient operation and maintenance of irrigation schemes are needed for improving the hydraulic performance of the canals, enhancing the crop yields and insuring sustainable production. There is a great need to enhance the researches and for a variety of tools such as water control and regulation equipment, decision support systems, as well as field surveys and valuation techniques. Water management becomes difficult when dealing with sediment transport in irrigation canals. Most of the studies simulate the sediment transport of relatively coarse grain sizes. The sediment problem in irrigation canals becomes more complicated when dealing with cohesive sediment transport. Therefore, more research is needed to enhance the understanding of the behaviour of cohesive sediment transport under a variety of operation conditions. This study has been carried out in the Gezira Scheme in Sudan. The scheme, which is one of the largest irrigation schemes in the world under a single management, is located in the arid and semi-arid region. The scheme is chosen as a case study since it can act as a model for similar irrigation schemes. The scheme has a total area of 880,000 ha and uses 35% of Sudan’s current allocation of Nile waters. This represents 6 – 7 billion m3 per year. The scheme is irrigated from the Blue Nile River, which is characterized by its high load of fine sediment. The scheme is facing severe sediment accumulation in its irrigation canals, which represents a challenge to those responsible for the operation and maintenance of the canals. Each year large investments are required to maintain and to upgrade the canal system to keep it in an acceptable condition. A large quantity of cohesive sediment enters the scheme every year. According to previous studies, about 60% of the sediment deposits in the irrigation canals. The sediment accumulation in the canals reduces the canal conveyance capacity, causes irrigation difficulties, creates inequity and inadequate water supply and increases the rate of aquatic weed growth. The sedimentation problems are not only seriously affecting the performance of the irrigation canals, but are also jeopardizing their sustainability, as well as affecting crop production. Two canals in the scheme have been selected to be studied in detail: Zananda Major Canal, which takes water from Gezira Main Canal at 57 km from the offtake at Sennar Dam, and Toman Minor Canal at 12.5 km from the offtake of Zananda Major Canal. The hypothesis of the study postulates that the operation and maintenance of an irrigation scheme has a major influence on the hydrodynamic behaviour of canals and hence on sediment movement and deposition. The aim of this study was to improve the operation and maintenance procedures for better sediment and water management. This can be achieved through better understanding of the sediment processes in the irrigation canals of the Gezira Scheme and to understand clearly the link between irrigation system operation and resulting system performance in terms of transport of cohesive sediment. Data collection and field measurements have been conducted during the flood season between June and October in 2011 and 2012. Sediment sampling and water level measurements have been conducted on a daily basis at selected locations. The manually recorded water levels include about 1080 readings per year. In addition about 1290 sediment samples were analysed for different locations during the study period. Cross-sectional surveys have been performed at the beginning and end of the flood season to address the spatial and temporal variation of the sediment deposition in the canals under study and to detect changes in the bed profile. The head regulator and outlet control structures were calibrated by using the measured stage-discharge relationships. More elaboration is given to the properties of cohesive sediment and identification of the dominant factors that cause deposition in irrigation canals. Sediment properties were tested such as grain size distribution, mechanical and physico-chemical properties of the sediment. The irrigation schedules, cropped area and sowing dates for different crops were reported. Other data such as canal design data, historical data of the sediment and flow for certain canals were reviewed. The analysis of the data indicates a variation of the water level along the canals under study. It should be noted that the operation control in Gezira Scheme is by using upstream control structures. The field data show that the flow release in the system is not regularly adjusted in a systematic way to meet the demand and maintain the required water level. Continuous change in gate setting results in instability of the water level. This situation became worse with more sediment deposition. The water level has been raised far above the design level and there is lapse in working levels especially at the major and minor canals. The rise is found to be about 1.6 and 1.2 m above the design level at the head of the major and minor canals under study. Furthermore, reduction in the water depth has been detected along the canals as result of bed rise and enlarging of canal sections due to improper desilting. The results demonstrate that the supply of water was extremely large during the flood season of 2011 compared to the actual crop water requirement, especially during the period of high sediment concentration. The delivery performance ratio indicated an oversupply at the major canal in 2011 during most of the time. The study also provides some valuable insight into the nature of sediment in Gezira Scheme. There is a limitation in the existing models that deal with fine sediment transport in irrigation canals. Most of the sediment transport models are developed for estuaries and rivers. Therefore there was a great need to develop a simple but effective numerical model that incorporates control structures to simulate the fine sediment transport in irrigation canals. Although there are similarities between rivers and irrigation canals, irrigation canals are different. The presence of a large number of flow control structures and the high influence of the side banks on the velocity distribution create some differences in both types of channels. Hence, it was important to develop a model dealing with fine sediment in irrigation canals, including different types of hydraulic structures. In line with this the one dimensional numerical model Fine SEDiment Transport (FSEDT) dealing with fine sediment transport in irrigation canals has been developed. The model has been used as a tool to study the mechanism of water and sediment flow under different operation and maintenance scenarios. The water surface profile has been predicted by using the predictor corrector method to solve the gradually varied flow equation. The prediction of sediment concentration is based on the solution of the one dimensional advection-diffusion equation. The bed material exchange was determined based on the Partheniades (1962) and Krone (1965) equations. The change in bed level was computed based on the sediment mass balance equation that was solved numerically by using the finite difference method. The model has been applied in the Gezira Scheme. On the basis of the field data the model has been calibrated and validated. The predicted bed profiles depict good agreement with the measured ones. The model is capable to predict the bed profile for any period of simulation. The model can predict the sediment concentration hydrograph at different points within a canal reach, in addition to the total volume of the sediment deposition in the reach. The output of the model can be presented in tabular or graphical form. The sediment transport in the irrigation canals has been simulated by adopting different scenarios. The interrelationship between water flow and sediment transport in the irrigation canals under changing flow conditions has been investigated. Two scenarios of operation were tested at the major canal under study. The model evaluated the indent system that has been applied in Gezira Scheme for many years in regard to sediment deposition. Another proposed scenario based on crop water requirement was also tested. In addition, operation under future changed conditions in case of reduction in the sediment concentration was tested. The different operation scenarios have been compared with the existing condition based on data collected during the flood season in 2011 in terms of sedimentation. Based on this, the following remarks are made: the effect of varying crest settings of the movable weirs has been investigated and less sediment deposition was found to occur when the crest level was set at its lowest position. The sediment transport in the canals is influenced by the operation of the hydraulic structures, especially upstream of movable weirs. The effect is extended to about 3 km upstream of the weir; for many years the indent system of water allocation was applied in the Gezira Scheme based on duty and cropped area. However, this system of operation has been absent during the last years. The slope of Zananda Major Canal became 13 cm/km and 18 cm/km for the first and second reaches respectivelycampaigns the reduction of the water delivery during the period of high concentration between 10 July and 10 August, based on the crop water requirement results in reduction in the sediment deposition by 51 and 55% for the first and second reaches respectively when compared to the situation in 2011; the reduction of the Blue Nile River sediment concentration by 50% as result of the construction of the Ethiopia Renaissance Dam and/or improvement in the land use has been simulated. The results of the simulation of the suspended sediment transport at the major canal indicate that the deposition will be 74 and 81% lower for the first and second reaches respectively when compared with the situation in 2011. At the minor canals, the night storage weirs were designed as cross structures. The idea behind the night storage system was to store water during the night by closing all field outlet pipes and the gates of the cross structures along the minor canal at 6:00 pm and releasing them at 6:00 am. Although this system has been vanished to keep pace with crop intensification and to cope with the deterioration of the water supply due to the poor maintenance of the canals, this scenario has also been simulated. The hydrodynamic flow in the canals during the filling time has been simulated by using the DUFLOW model since the model can be applied for unsteady flow. A spreadsheet has been designed to predict the deposition every hour based on the output of the DUFLOW model. The night storage system has been compared with the continuous system regarding the sediment transport in addition to other scenarios. It was found that: the continuous system reduces the amount of deposited sediment by 55% compared to the night storage system; about 29% of the sediment was reduced in 2011 when the system was operated based on crop water requirement; the deposition lightly increased with reduced capacity of the field outlet pipes. The The main findings and the contributions that are made by this study: the study comes up with a model dealing with cohesive sediment in irrigation canals for effective sediment and water management, which can be applied widely for similar irrigation schemes dealing with fine sediment; it is possible to improve the sediment and water management by improving the operation and maintenance. The high irrigation efficiency is tending to mitigate the inflow sediment load and as a consequence less deposition is expected; the study comes up with strategies of water management that can reduce the deposition in irrigation canals by operating the system continuously based on crop water requirement at the period of high sediment concentration with the field outlet pipes operating at their full capacity. The absence of proper maintenance activities and water management has a prominent role in increasing the deposition along the irrigation canals in Gezira Scheme. Improving the operation and maintenance is not the only way to mitigate the sedimentation in the irrigation canals. A great consideration needs to be given to improve the design since conditions based on the original design have been changed with time such as the operation system (night storage system, indent system), cropping intensity and geometry of the canals. In other words, rehabilitation of the system will not be one of the solutions to mitigate the accumulation of the deposition along the canals but the system itself needs remodelling. The developed model can be used to assess the new design and to evaluate the proposed management plans in terms of transport of cohesive sediment.