Water Resources in Agro-Forestal Systems

CFU 1 - Introduction: educational objectives, contents, examination, material for the course. European and national legislation in the field of water resources. Review of the knowledge base of hydrological cycle, hydrological processes and water balance at the agricultural soil and watershed scales, hydraulics. CFU 2-3 - Water in the soil and subsoil, laws governing water movements in the unsaturated and saturated zones. The unsaturated zone: water content and potential, retention and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curves, pedo-transfer functions, law of continuity, Darcy's law and its extension to non-saturated porous media, Richards equation for the unsaturated porous media, modification of the Richards equation in case of vegetated soils. The saturated zone: laws governing water movements in the saturated zone. CFU 4 - Tools and techniques for the monitoring in the field and in laboratory of: potential and actual evapotranspiration, crop coefficient, leaf area index, bulk density, soil water content, matric potential, water retention curve, saturated hydraulic conductivity, irrigation supply, water table depth. CFU 5-6 - Hydrological modeling at the field and basin scales. The process of model building, calibration and validation. Classification of hydrological models and examples of models. Decision support systems (DSS) applied to the integrated and participatory planning of water resources at the basin scale. 6 CFU (informatic lab) - An example of a physically based model (solving the Richards equation) for the simulation of hydrological processes at the field scale. Its application to a maize field in the Lodi area. CFU 6 (informatic lab) - An example of a conceptual distributed model for the irrigation planning at the irrigation district scale. Its application to a 700 km2 irrigation district in Lombardy.