Salt Mod - Principles - Water Balances

Water Balances

The water balances are calculated for each reservoir separately as shown in the article Hydrology (agriculture). The excess water leaving one reservoir is converted into incoming water for the next reservoir.
The three soil reservoirs can be assigned a different thickness and storage coefficients, to be given as input data.
In a particular situation, the transition zone or the aquifer need not be present. Then, it must be given a minimum thickness of 0.1 m.
The depth of the water table, calculated from the water balances, is assumed to be the same for the whole area. If this assumption is not acceptable, the area must be divided into separate units.
Under certain conditions, the height of the water table influences the water balance components. For example a rise of the water table towards the soil surface may lead to an increase of evaporation, surface runoff, and subsurface drainage, or a decrease of percolation losses from canals. This, in turn, leads to a change of the water balance, which again influences the height of the water table, etc.
This chain of reactions is one of the reasons why Saltmod has been developed into a computer program. It takes a number of repeated calculations (iterations) to find the correct equilibrium of the water balance, which would be a tedious job if done by hand. Other reasons are that a computer program facilitates the computations for different water management options over long periods of time (with the aim to simulate their long-term impacts) and for trial runs with varying parameters.