Performance benchmarking in irrigation and drainage systems

Due to the rapid growth in world population, increasing numbers of people especially those who are living in arid and semi-arid regions are suffering from shortage of water and food, and this is the driving force for improving irrigation and drainage systems’ efficiency. As irrigated agriculture is a consumer for over 75% of world fresh water supplies, using the water allocated to the agricultural sector more efficient and then releasing the surplus of water for other sectors’ use seems to be the only solution for coping with water scarcity. Irrigation and drainage infrastructure is the indispensable element of irrigated agriculture. The level of irrigation and drainage services maintained in the irrigation area is directly affecting the quantity of crop production. Improving irrigation system efficiency / performance in aspects of Management - Operation - Maintenance (MOM) tasks has become a major concern for stakeholders and system managers, but monitoring and evaluating the performance of irrigation systems by using performance indicators have been a major concern for the researchers in this area. The term “Irrigation system performance evaluation” refers to what extent the targets and objectives have been achieved. Benchmarking implies comparison either internally with previous performance and desired future targets, or externally against similar organizations, or organizations performing similar functions. The overall aim of benchmarking is to improve the performance of an organization as measured against its mission and objectives. This paper emphasizes on the concept of benchmarking and its applications in irrigation and drainage systems

Quality control and homogeneity of annual precipitation data in Büyük Menderes Basin, Turkey

Precipitation is one of the most impotant climatic factors affecting agricultural production. Knowledge about spatial variability of precipitation amount over an agricultural area, its temporal change not only throughout a year but also over long-term span, start, end and length of rainy period, risk of wet and dry periods would be needed for appropriate agricultural planning and water management issues. However, analysis of long-term precipitation data for various purposes to be accurate, precipitation data must be homogeneous. It is defined that, as for other climatic time series, a homogeneous precipitation time series is to be affected by only natural weather and climatic conditions. Non-climatological factors such as changes in instrument, relocation of station, changes in observation practices make any climatic time series inhomogeneous. In this study, a quality control process involving outlier trimming and homogeneity checking were applied to 20 annual precipitation time series of various lenghts in Buyuk Menderes Basin, Turkey. Homogeneity analysis were performed using the Pettitt test and the Buishand range test. The results of the tests showed that 8 out of 20 stations can be considered to be inhomogeneous whose change points were found to be significant at 5% level by either one or both tests

Determination of crop water stress index (CWSI) of second crop corn in a semiarid climate

This study was carried out to determine the relationship between the canopy-air temperature differential and vapor pressure deficit (VPD), which can be used to quantify the crop water stress index (CWSI) under fully irrigated ( 100 %) and maximum water stress (0 %) conditions of furrow irrigated corn. The effects of five different irrigation levels (100, 70, 50, 30 and 0 % replenishment of soil water depleted from the 0.90 m soil profile depth) on corn yields and the resulting CWSI were investigated. The highest yield and total water use were obtained under fully irrigated corn plots (100 % replenishment of soil water depleted). The trends in CWSI values were consistent with the soil water content induced by deficit irrigation. CWSI increased with increased soil water deficit. An average CWSI of 0.22 before irrigation time provided the highest grain corn yield. The yield was directly correlated with seasonal mean CWSI values and a second order polynomial equation “Y = 59258CWSI2 -72051CWSI +24060” can be used to predict the grain yield of corn as a second crop under the semiarid climate

Hesleri ve Hesler Üzerinden Değişimi Anlamak

Hidroelektrik santrallerin çevre kirliliği yaratmadığı ifadesinin dile getirildiği her durumda, içim sızlıyor. Derelerin kardeşliğinin örülmesi oldukça önemli. Ülkenin dört bir yanında akan suya elini uzatanlara karşı, farklı kültürler, farklı renkler, farklı dillerin bir araya gelmesi ne güzel

From Gezi Resistance To Soma Massacre: Capital Accumulation and Class Struggle in Turkey

On 31 May 2013, a local demonstration against the destruction of Gezi Park in Taksim, Istanbul as part of an urban renewal project turned into a spontaneous countrywide uprising. In the course of a few weeks, 2.5 million people filled the streets of 79 Turkish cities, with the slogans ‘everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance’, and demanding the government resign. The Gezi resistance can be considered as part of the global wave of uprisings that started in 2009, centred in countries around the Mediterranean, as reactions against various facets of the deepening of capitalist social relations and the corresponding rise in the authoritarianism of the state. Analyses of the class character of the Gezi resistance often miss the mark, arguing for example that the resistance had no class content or at most a strictly middle class character. There are two main problems, as we see it, with the middle-class thesis. First, it focuses on the individual class positions of the protestors, defined narrowly as a place in production relations or in the consumption sphere. A Marxian analysis instead defines classes in terms of their objective and subjective relations to the totality of the capital accumulation process, encompassing production, realization and revalorization. In this case, the Gezi resistance represented a struggle against the commodification of nature in the context of the revalorization of capital and the reproduction of the state. The other major problem with the middle-class thesis is that it turns attention only to the beginning of the events and the nature of the protests at Gezi Park; the uprising is reduced to a moment rather than a process. But if we take into account the class composition and political demands of 2.5 million people who protested in all but two cities of Turkey over the month of June 2012, as well as the ongoing struggles before and after the Gezi resistance, a quite different image emerges, as we will show in this essay. The Gezi resistance reflects a general shift in protests from the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s against supranational institutions to anti-government protests targeted at national states. The shift in discourse of these ongoing protests in Turkey, now directed against class power concentrated in the Turkish state, mark a huge leap forward in class struggle from the national-developmentalist discourse of the late 1990s against external forces such as the IMF and the World Bank