JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

The investigation of local scour below hydraulic structures is so complex that makes it difficult to establish a general model to provide an accurate estimation for the local scour dimension. During the last decades, Data Driven Methods (DDM) have  been used extensively in the modeling and prediction of unknown or complex behaviors of systems One of these methods is Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH), that is a self-organization approach and increasingly produces a  complex model during the performance evaluation of  the input and output data sets. So, the objective of this study was to investigate the potential of the GMDH method in the accurate estimation of local scouring geometry (maximum scour depth, the distance of maximum local scour depth till Ski-jump bucket and length of local scour) below the Siphon spillway with Ski-jump bucket energy dissipaters for a set of experimental data. 80% of data set was used for the training period and the remaining data set was used for the test period. The average values of MSRE, MPRE, CE and RB for the nonlinear second order transfer function (FUNC1) were calculated to be 0.92, 0.02, 8.74, -0.01; also, for the nonlinear first order transfer function (FUNC2), they were 0.85, 0.02, 10.43 and -0.02, respectively. The results indicated that the performance of FUNC1 was better than FUNC2. Also, the value of the coefficient of determination (R2) for the estimation of local scour dimension using different methods such as s linear regression, nonlinear regression and ANN indicated the high performance of the developed model of GMDH in the accurate estimation for local scour dimensions.

Due to the climatic conditions of Iran, increasing water scarcity, and the effect of drought stress on the efficiency of irrigation water consumption and chemical fertilizers application, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of irrigation intervals (6, 9, and 12-day intervals), different levels of nitrogen fertilizer (200, 300, and 400 kg urea per hectare) and cultivation methods (on-ridge or heeling up and in-furrow) on yield and productivity of sugarcane as a factorial design based on randomized complete block design in 3 replications at Hakim Farabi Agro-Industry Company in Khuzestan province. The results showed that the maximum (106.73 tons/ha) and minimum (59.10 tons/ha) sugarcane yields were observed in 9-day and 12-day irrigation intervals, respectively. Also, the highest sugarcane yield (99.89 tons per hectare) was obtained in the treatment of 400 kg urea per hectare and the in-furrow planting method resulted in a higher yield compared to the on-ridge planting method. The highest water productivity in sugarcane stem yield and sugar production with 3.55 and 0.34 kg per cubic meter of applied water, respectively, was obtained in a 9-day irrigation interval. A significant increase in water use efficiency in sugarcane stem yield was observed in 400 kg urea/ha compared to the other two fertilizer levels. However, there was no significant difference in water productivity of sugar yield between different fertilizer treatments. The results showed that 6 and 9-day irrigation intervals in most of the studied traits were not significantly different. Therefore, using a 9-day irrigation interval is suggested in the studied area when the sugarcane cultivation area is high and the amount of available water is limited. In-furrow planting method can also be effective in reducing water consumption. Therefore, deficit irrigation and proper nitrogen fertilizer consumption can be very effective in sugarcane cultivation.