Field-scale modeling of subsurface tile-drained soils using an equivalent-medium approach

SummaryResearch conducted for the last 35 years has shown that subsurface drainage has a significant impact on hydrology and contaminant transport. This can be observed at the field-scale and also at the watershed scale. Impacts are always associated with modifying otherwise natural flow paths. Most computer model representations of drainage have been drawn at the field-scale. These models require relatively precise data that are usually unavailable when simulating hydrology and water quality in large watersheds. We believe that in this case drainage representation should be simplified and yet closely match observations. As a first step towards incorporating drainage systems into large-scale hydrological models, we propose an equivalent representation of drains buried in a soil profile by using a homogeneous anisotropic porous medium without drains. This representation is based on a “self-consistent” approach and on geometrical considerations. Simplification is such that calculating the equivalent hydraulic conductivity requires only information on the main length and spacing of the tile drains and not on their precise location. This approach also provides a much simpler discretisation of the domain because of the absence of internal boundary conditions on the drainage pipes. Compared to other methods that have simplified drainage representation in existing watershed models, it requires no parameter fitting. Two alternatives to the method are presented: in the first one, the soil profile equipped with the actual drain pipes is represented by an equivalent, horizontally layered system with no pipes; in the second, the layered system has been replaced with an equivalent homogeneous profile. The efficiency of these approaches was tested against a classical representation of tile drains using the SWMS 3D code, which solves the Richards equation for a typical drained plot configuration. The equivalent-medium approach appears to give satisfying results for global water outflow and mean water table elevation.