REVIEW ARTICLE An overview of impact of subsurface drainage project studies on salinity management in developing countries Priyanka Tiwari 1 • Arun Goel 1 Received: 29 December 2014 / Accepted: 25 August 2015 / Published online: 22 September 2015 Ó The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Subsurface drainage has been used for more than a century to keep water table at a desired level of salinity and waterlogging control. This paper has been focused on the impact assessment of pilot studies in India and some other countries from 1969 to 2014. This review article may prove quite useful in deciding the installation of subsurface drainage project depending on main design parameters, such as drain depth and drain spacing, instal- lation area and type of used outlet. A number of pilot studies have been taken up in past to solve the problems of soil salinity and waterlogging in India. The general guidelines that arise on the behalf of this review paper are to adapt drain depth [ 1.2 m and spacing depending on soil texture classification, i.e., 100–150 m for light-textured soils, 50–100 m for medium-textured soils and 30–50 m heavy-textured soils, for better result obtained from the problem areas in Indian soil and climatic conditions. An attempt has been made in the manner of literature survey to highlight the salient features of these studies, and it is hopeful to go a long way in selecting design parameters for subsurface drainage problems in the future with similar soil, water table and climatic conditions. Keywords Subsurface drainage Á Salinity Á Waterlogging and groundwater table Introduction Land and water are two basic natural resources. Due to rapid population growth and fast industrialization, these resources are facing immense pressure and are depleting day by day. According to the FAO land and plant nutrition management service (1994), over 6 % of the world’s land is affected by either salinity or sodicity. Much of the world’s land is not cultivated; however, a significant pro- portion of cultivated land is salt-affected, and of the current 230 million ha of irrigated land, 45 million ha is salt-af- fected (19.5 %), and of the 1500 million ha under dry land agriculture, 32 million ha is salt-affected to varying degrees, i.e., 2.1 % (Hefny et al. 2013). World’s large irrigated regions with serious salinity problems are Yellow River Plain in China, San Joaquin Valley in California, KaraKum Canal project in Turkmenistan, Indus Plain in Pakistan, Tigris–Euphrates Plain in Iraq, Murray–Mur- rumbidgee Area in Australia and lower Nile Valley in Egypt, which need a serious attention of researchers (Ghassemi et al. 1995). Subsurface drainage is considered as a most suitable approach for groundwater balance and land and water management practices containing the groundwater table at a suitable level (Luthin 1978; Gates and Grismer 1989). Agricultural subsurface drainage is a process of removal of excess groundwater from the crop root zone system which promotes safe environment for efficient crop growth and for better health in rural and urban areas. Subsurface drainage lowers the high water tables, and the main causes of the rise in water table are precipitation, excess irrigation, leaching water, seeps from higher land or irrigation canal and ditches and groundwater under artesian pressure. This technique has gained international acceptance. Sub- surface agricultural drainage provides agronomical and & Priyanka Tiwari tiwari.priyankatiwari.p2@gmail.com Arun Goel drarun_goel@yahoo.co.in 1 Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology (Institute of National Importance), Kurukshetra, Haryana 136119, India 123 Appl Water Sci (2017) 7:569–580 DOI 10.1007/s13201-015-0329-4