Published Paper Details:

Many regions in the world, including Logar province, Afghanistan, are prone to floods and droughts and efficient infrastructure, which will mitigate floods with water collection and subsequent water usage during drought periods along with the decrease of water loss evaporation, for the irrigation purposes are required for the permanent investigation and improvement. The aim of this research is to analyze and prepare inventory of the irrigation system in Logar province, Afghanistan, for the further investigation and development of the applied sustainable water resource programs. The research area is Logar province, which is one of the 34 provinces, located in the South-East of Afghanistan. 90 % of Logar populations are involved in agriculture. Research methods are comparative - descriptive method and review of publications, analysis of statistical data, study and comparison of the different irrigation technologies used by farmers in Logar province. The preliminary results show that there are four types of irrigation systems in Logar: (a) main irrigation canals feeding from the Logar River; (b) secondary subsidiary canals, or irrigation schemes, feeding from the main irrigation canal (a); (c) ancient Karez: underground lateral water channels; (d) artesian nonrenewable groundwater resources, with intensive pumping. There are big water losses in the canals due to the evaporations and old cracked networking facilities. Moreover, intensive water pumping has depleted the underground water resources, which also influenced and shortened the water supply into the Karez networks. Climate Change requires adaption and upgrades of the irrigation system. There are two main trends in irrigation system improvement: one is related to the construction of the big dams, to hold a big amount of water and the next chain of the irrigation channels; another to restore the old, existing ancient karez channels with sustainable small technologies upgrades. India`s Paani Foundation is using the second approach now to mitigate the water crisis by combining the old traditional manual build channel with modern managed aquifer recharge (MAR) technologies, supported by the intensive scientific research support ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8nqnOcoLqE&ab_channel=AndrewMillison). Technologies as MAR to support adequate flood-drought management systems combined with the retention ponds infrastructure, similarly to India`s Paani Foundation, may provide the sustainable solution to improve the irrigation system in Afghanistan. The further investigation of the sustainable irrigation technologies is required.