Contributions by Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer to effective and responsible water management in agriculture

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2006.08.008Get rights and content

Abstract

The first three, successive Editors-in-Chief of Agricultural Water Management, Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer, were of Dutch origin, received their early training immediately after World War II, and started their careers in the early 1950s: Jans in The Netherlands and Jan and Herman in the USA. In this paper we review the circumstances and the highlights of their contributions to responsible management of water in agriculture. Following a sketch of the state of agricultural water management research around 1950, both in The Netherlands and in the USA, we describe their training, document their early scientific contributions, especially in the realm of agricultural drainage, and highlight their later service as research managers. The three careers reflect the great progress in the second half of the 20th century: the scope of water management research widened, computational capabilities became more powerful, experimental methods became more sophisticated. With increasing attention for environmental implications of water management, the focus of research changed from mainly water quantity to both water quantity and quality. The review of the careers of the first three Editors-in-Chief shows that the journal Agricultural Water Management from its inception and throughout its first quarter century was in very good hands.

Introduction

Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer were the first three, successive Editors-in-Chief (EICs) of Agricultural Water Management (Oster et al., 2006). All three are of Dutch origin, received their early training immediately after World War II, and started their careers in the early 1950s by studying various aspects of agricultural drainage. Later their interests diverged. Jans Wesseling became Head of the Department of Water Management of the Institute for Land and Water Management Research at Wageningen, The Netherlands, where with his team he focussed on regional water management. Jan van Schilfgaarde held a wide variety of leadership positions in the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), eventually paying much attention to irrigation agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions. Herman Bouwer focussed on artificial recharge of groundwater and also served as Director of the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory of the USDA-ARS at Phoenix, Arizona. Serving as successive Editors-in Chief in the later parts of their careers, they brought to the journal Agricultural Water Management a wide variety of experience. In this paper we review the circumstances and the highlights of their contributions to responsible management of water in agriculture.

The outline of this paper is as follows. In Section 2, we describe the state of agricultural water management research around 1950, both in The Netherlands and in the USA. In Sections 3 Jans Wesseling, 3.1 Youth in the province of Drenthe and training at Wageningen Agricultural University (1945–1956), 3.2 Institute for Land and Water Management Research (ICW) (1957–1986), 3.2.1 Agrohydrological research (1957–1972), 3.2.2 Management of the Department of Water Management (1973–1986), 3.3 Service as educator, 3.4 Recognition, 4 Jan van Schilfgaarde, 4.1 Youth at The Hague and training at Hope College (Michigan) and Iowa State College (1946–1954), 4.2 North Carolina State University (1954–1964), 4.3 USDA-ARS-SWCRD (1964–1997), 4.3.1 Beltsville, Maryland Headquarters of USDA-ARS-SWCRD (1964–1972), 4.3.2 U.S. Salinity Laboratory (USSL) at Riverside, California (1972–1984), 4.3.3 A long round trip from California to Beltsville (1984–1997), 4.3.4 Attention for worldwide problems, 4.4 Recognition, 5 Herman Bouwer, we describe the careers of, respectively, Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer. We describe their training, document their early scientific contributions, especially in the realm of agricultural drainage, and briefly highlight their later service as research managers. In Section 6, we present some concluding remarks.

Section snippets

The Netherlands

In 1952 the journal Soil Science published a special issue on Soil Science in the Netherlands, providing an overview of the state of soil science and water management (Anon., 1952). The special issue opens with a description of Dutch agriculture by W.C. Visser of the Government Service for Land Improvement, Drainage, and Reallocation at Utrecht. Dutch soils and water control are described, respectively, by C.H. Edelman and F. Hellinga of the State Agricultural University at Wageningen, while

Youth in the province of Drenthe and training at Wageningen Agricultural University (1945–1956)

Jans Wesseling was born in 1925 at Emmen in the province of Drenthe in the north-eastern part of The Netherlands, as one of 10 children. When he was a child his father rented a new farm in the nearby village Wijster and the family moved. After a few years at the MULO in Emmen and Beilen, he completed his high-school education at the HBS in Hoogeveen in 1944. In September 1945, he enrolled at the State Agricultural University at Wageningen, The Netherlands as student of Arable and Grassland

Youth at The Hague and training at Hope College (Michigan) and Iowa State College (1946–1954)

Jan van Schilfgaarde was born in 1929 at The Hague, The Netherlands. In 1946, after completing secondary school, he went to the USA to study on a scholarship at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Following this, rather than returning to The Netherlands, he continued his study at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) at Ames, Iowa. In 1951 Jan married Roberta Hansen. They have 3 sons and 7 grandchildren.

Jan van Schilfgaarde obtained B.Sc. (1949) and M.Sc. (1950) degrees in Agricultural

Youth at Haarlem and training at Wageningen Agricultural University and Cornell University (1945–1955)

Herman Bouwer was born in 1927 at Haarlem, The Netherlands. In a lucid autobiographical story, he writes about growing up in what for older generations is still ‘De oorlog’ (Bouwer, 2003). After graduating from high school in July 1944, he went “underground” till in May 1945 The Netherlands was liberated by the allied forces from Nazi occupation.

In September 1945, Herman Bouwer enrolled at the State Agricultural University at Wageningen. From reading books, he was fascinated by ‘life in the

Concluding remarks

World War II caused a considerable shift in the attention of Dutch scientists, away from Continental Europe and towards the Anglo-Saxon world, in particular the USA (Rupp, 1997). In the fields of agricultural water management and soil science the interaction across the Atlantic was particularly intense, especially with regard to the theory of drainage and the analysis of flow of water in unsaturated soils.

The careers of the former Editors-in-Chief reflect the great progress in the second half

Acknowledgements

We thank the three former EIC's of AGWAT and members of their families, and also Mary Beth Kirkham, Mick Fleming, Ferdinand Kastanek, Jerry Lambert, Jim Oster, and Wayne Skaggs for sharing information with us.

References (185)

  • Anon.

    A series of 10 papers on Soil Science in The Netherlands, with a brief introduction by the Editor-in-Chief F.E. Bear

    Soil Sci.

    (1952)
  • Anon.

    Het water in onverzadigde grond (water in unsaturated soil)

  • Anon.

    Six papers presented at the Jans Wesseling Farewell Symposium ‘Waterhuishoudkundig onderzoek: van beheersing tot beheer (Water balance research: From control to management)’

    Cultuurtechnisch Tijdschrift

    (1987)
  • V.S. Aronovici et al.

    Soil permeability as a criterion for drainage design

    Trans. Am. Geophys. Union

    (1946)
  • H. Bouwer

    Tile drainage of sloping fields

    Agric. Eng.

    (1955)
  • H. Bouwer

    Infiltration patterns for surface irrigation

    Agric. Eng.

    (1957)
  • H. Bouwer

    Integrating rainfall-evaporation recorder

    Agric. Eng.

    (1959)
  • H. Bouwer

    Theoretical aspects of flow above the water table in tile drainage of shallow homogeneous soils

    Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc.

    (1959)
  • H. Bouwer

    Theoretical aspects of unsaturated flow in drainage and subirrigation

    Agric. Eng.

    (1959)
  • H. Bouwer

    A study of final infiltration rates from cylinder infiltrometers and irrigation furrows with a resistance network analog

    Trans. 7th Int. Cong. Soil Sci.

    (1960)
  • H. Bouwer

    A double-tube method of measuring hydraulic conductivity of soil in situ above a water table

    Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc.

    (1961)
  • H. Bouwer

    A variable head technique for seepage meters

    J. Irrig. Drain. Div. ASCE

    (1961)
  • H. Bouwer

    Analyzing groundwater mounds by resistance network

    J. Irrig. Drain. Div. ASCE

    (1962)
  • H. Bouwer

    Field determination of hydraulic conductivity above a water table with the double-tube method

    Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc.

    (1962)
  • H. Bouwer

    Measuring horizontal and vertical hydraulic conductivity of soil with the double-tube method

    Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc.

    (1964)
  • H. Bouwer

    Resistance network analogs for solving ground-water problems

    Ground Water

    (1964)
  • H. Bouwer

    Unsaturated flow in groundwater hydraulics

    J. Hydraul. Div. ASCE

    (1964)
  • Bouwer H., 1965a. Developing design requirements for parallel drains. In: van Schilfgaarde, J. (Conference Chairman),...
  • H. Bouwer

    Limitation of the Dupuit-Forchheimer assumption in recharge and seepage

    Trans. ASAE

    (1965)
  • H. Bouwer

    Theoretical aspects of seepage from open channels

    J. Hydraul. Div. ASCE

    (1965)
  • H. Bouwer

    Rapid field measurement of air entry value and hydraulic conductivity of soil as significant parameters in flow system analysis

    Water Resour. Res.

    (1966)
  • H. Bouwer

    Analyzing subsurface flow systems with electric analogs

    Water Resour. Res.

    (1967)
  • H. Bouwer

    Infiltration of water into nonuniform soil

    J. Irrig. Drain. Div. ASCE

    (1969)
  • H. Bouwer

    Salt balance, irrigation efficiency, and drainage design

    J. Irrig. Drain. Div. ASCE

    (1969)
  • H. Bouwer

    Developing drainage design criteria

  • H. Bouwer

    Predicting reduction in water losses from open channels by phreatophyte control

    Water Resour. Res.

    (1975)
  • H. Bouwer

    Infiltration into increasingly permeable soils

    J. Irrig. Drain. Div. ASCE

    (1976)
  • H. Bouwer

    Groundwater Hydrology

    (1978)
  • H. Bouwer

    Soil water hysteresis as a cause of delayed yield from unconfined aquifers

    Water Resour. Res.

    (1979)
  • H. Bouwer

    Wastewater renovation in rapid infiltration systems

  • H. Bouwer

    Artificial recharge of groundwater: hydrogeology and engineering

    Hydrogeol. J.

    (2002)
  • H. Bouwer

    Integrated water management for the 21st century: problems and solutions

    J. Irrig. Drain. Eng. ASCE

    (2002)
  • H. Bouwer

    Historical note/about herman bouwer

    Ground Water

    (2003)
  • H. Bouwer

    Adverse effects of sewage irrigation on plants, crops, soil, and groundwater

  • H. Bouwer et al.

    Determining soil properties

  • H. Bouwer et al.

    A unifying numerical solution for two-dimensional steady flow problems in porous media with an electrical resistance network

    Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc.

    (1959)
  • H. Bouwer et al.

    Making sense of the interaction between groundwater and streamflow: lessons from watermasters and adjudicators

    Rivers

    (1997)
  • H. Bouwer et al.

    Seepage meters in recharge and seepage studies

    J. Irrig. Drain. Div. ASCE

    (1963)
  • H. Bouwer et al.

    Simplified procedure for calculation of hydraulic coductivity with the double-tube method

    Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc.

    (1964)
  • H. Bouwer et al.

    Modified tube diameters for the double-tube apparatus

    Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc.

    (1967)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text