Comparative assessment of widespread irrigation with low quality mine-water in undisturbed and rehabilitated mine-lands in the upper Olifants using the ACRU2000 model

Abstract

The ACRU agrohydrological model, in the form of ACRU2000 and its salinity module, ACRUSalinity , was employed in catchment-scale assessment of widespread irrigation with low quality mine-water in undisturbed (un-mined) and reha bilitated soils in the Upper Olifants basin of South Africa. The study area comprised a small catchment of 4.7 km 2 located in a coal-mine environment, known as the Tweefontein Pan catchment. The catchment drained to a surface reservoir (Tweefontein Reservoir) of maximum capacity and surface area 4 000 Mℓ and 1.5 km 2, respectively. The catchment was instrumented to measure hydrodynamic responses and simulated as a hydrological system. Consideration was given to run off, groundwater storage, evapotranspiration, baseflow, interception, irrigation water supply and rainfall, thereby accounting for all the dominant hydrological components of the system. Three scenarios were simulated using the available records for 5 years (1999 to 2004).

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