To improve the performance of border irrigation, this study analyzed the spatial variability characteristics of the soil particle content and bulk density, based on soil physical parameters measured at 86 sampling points in the Hetao irrigation district (HID). The soil hydraulic parameters were determined using the RETC, and HYDRUS-1D was then adopted to estimate infiltration parameters of the Kostiakov equation at different locations. The optimal layout patterns of border size were proposed under the consideration of various combinations of different typical soil textures and field slopes by WinSRFR. The results indicated that the spatial distributions of clay and silt particle contents were generally high in the middle and low at both sides of the HID, while the sand was the opposite. The results proved that the soil physical parameters are only to be measured at depths of 0–20 and 20–40 cm to meet the needs of infiltration parameter estimation which can significantly reduce the workload of soil sample collection. Moreover, two types of optimal border layouts of different combinations of the soil textures (silt loam and silt clay loam) and field slopes (no more than 1‰, 1–3‰, and 3–5‰) were proposed, which can guarantee the application efficiency and distribution uniformity no less than 85%, and be the guidance for practical field irrigation in the HID.

为了提高边界灌溉的性能，本研究基于河套灌区（HID）86个采样点的土壤物理参数，分析了土壤颗粒含量和容重的空间变异特征。使用RETC确定土壤水力参数，然后采用HYDRUS-1D估算不同位置的Kostiakov方程的入渗参数。结合WinSRFR提出的不同典型土壤质地和田间坡度的各种组合，提出了边界尺寸的最佳布局模式。结果表明，在HID的中部和下部，粘土和淤泥颗粒含量的空间分布通常较高，而沙子则相反。结果证明，仅在0–20和20–40 cm的深度处测量土壤物理参数，才能满足入渗参数估计的需要，这可以显着减少土壤样品采集的工作量。此外，提出了两种土壤质地不同组合的最佳边界布局（粉壤土和粉质黏土壤土）和田间坡度（不超过1‰，1-3‰和3-5‰），这可以确保施用效率和分布均匀度均不低于85％，可作为HID实际田间灌溉的指导。