Scaling and prediction of soil moisture profile during redistribution phase

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• M. Sadeghi
• B. Ghahraman
• K. Davary

College of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

10.22067/jsw.v0i22.1041

Abstract

Abstract
The rate and duration of downward flow during redistribution process determines the effective soil water storage at any time. This property is vitally important, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions where plants must rely for long periods of time on the remained soil water of the root zone. In this study a new approach for scaling of soil moisture redistribution process based on the Green-Ampt redistribution theory was developed. Using the scaled results of numerical solution of the general flow (Richards’ equation), an empirical equation for predicting the soil moisture profile during redistribution process was derived. An important advantage of the empirical equation is adopting the effect of hysteresis in soil retention curve on redistribution process. To validate the proposed empirical equation, its outputs were compared with those of Richards’ solution for 11 soil textural classes (from sand to clay). The comparison showed negligible amount of error for all of the 11 soil textural classes and for a wide range of initial conditions. However, some deviations from results of Richards’ solution were observed under high initial infiltrated water depth and/or high initial soil water content. Therefore, a model which can estimate the soil moisture content at any depth and time during redistribution phase with accuracy of numerical models and simplicity in application of analytical models was obtained.

Key words: Scaling, Soil moisture profile, Redistribution phase, Green and Ampt equation, Richards’ equation

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