Investigating plant transpiration-induced soil suction affected by root morphology and root depth

This study evaluates the effects of root morphology and depth on the enhancement of induced suctions in soil grounds due to transpiration. Root morphology is idealized as uniform, triangular, parabolic and exponential distributions based on observations and the transpiration process is governed by the modified Richards equation. The study reveals that the exponential and triangular root networks enhance soil suctions more remarkably than the uniform and parabolic patterns. With the same total root amount, a root network with most of root amount concentrated in the superficial zone can induce significantly higher suction values than a root system distributed deeply.