Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
5763774 | Advances in Water Resources | 2017 | 38 Pages |
Abstract
Upscaling and/or estimating saturated hydraulic conductivity Ksat at the core scale from microscopic/macroscopic soil characteristics has been actively under investigation in the hydrology and soil physics communities for several decades. Numerous models have been developed based on different approaches, such as the bundle of capillary tubes model, pedotransfer functions, etc. In this study, we apply concepts from critical path analysis, an upscaling technique first developed in the physics literature, to estimate saturated hydraulic conductivity at the core scale from microscopic pore throat characteristics reflected in capillary pressure data. With this new model, we find Ksat estimations to be within a factor of 3 of the average measured saturated hydraulic conductivities reported by Rawls et al. (1982) for the eleven USDA soil texture classes.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Earth-Surface Processes
Authors
Behzad Ghanbarian, Allen G. Hunt, Todd H. Skaggs, Nicholas Jarvis,