A computer simulation model, LINKFLOW, has been developed to simulate the movement of water during various water table management practices, such as subsurface drainage, controlled drainage and subirrigation. Water movement is simulated to, or from, a buried tile drainage system through a heterogeneous and anisotropic soil to a zone of water extraction by plant roots and the atmosphere. The computer package links a newly-developed one-dimensional unsaturated ground water flow model to a three-dimensional saturated water flow model that was modified for the linkage and for simulating water flow under different water table management systems and varying climatic conditions. The movement of water is determined for a region of the field and the model can show the effectiveness of a water table management scheme to meet moisture conditions for crop growth for a wide range of soil, topographical, drain layout and weather conditions. LINKFLOW was validated and verified with measurements on subsurface drainage, controlled drainage and subirrigation systems in a corn field in southwestern Quebec. The model provides a powerful tool for the design and evaluation of water table management systems, and it can assist in developing control strategies for efficient management of water resources. LINKFLOW is unique among soil water models for the following features: (1) it can be used to simulate with varying topography; (2) it determines 3-D flows from drains in a heterogeneous, anisotropic soil; (3) it presents results in tabular format, contour map format, or 3-D surface format; and (4) it contains software routines for automated control in subirrigation. The formation of the conceptual model, numerical relations, methods of solution, validation, field verification and examples are presented.

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