Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
8894467 | Journal of Hydrology | 2018 | 30 Pages |
Abstract
Soil water infiltration can be described with the quasi-analytical Haverkamp et al. (1994) equation, defined by the hydraulic conductivity (Ks), sorptivity (S) and the β parameter. Ks and S are commonly estimated from the transient cumulative infiltration curve, using a constant β value. The objective of this work was to study the influence of β on the estimation of Ks and S. The study was first performed on synthetic 1-D infiltration curves generated at different infiltration times for loam sandy, loamy and silty soils, and next extrapolated to a 3-D loam synthetic soil and on 10 infiltrations curves measured on the field with a disc infiltrometer on different types of soils. The infiltration measurements lasted between 600 and 900â¯s. The results showed that, while early infiltration times (i.e. 100â¯s) promoted good estimations for S, longer infiltrations (i.e. 1.000â¯s) were required to estimate accurately Ks. Only very long infiltration (i.e. 10.000â¯s) allowed defining the actual β value. A similar behaviour was observed for the 3-D infiltration measurements. Except for β, significant relationships (R2â¯=â¯0.99) were obtained between the Ks and S of the three theoretical soils and the corresponding values calculated by optimizing the three hydraulic parameters on 2.000â¯s 1-D infiltration curves. The large confidence interval observed in β (between 0.3 and 2.0) resulted from the fact that β had a small effect on the infiltration curve. A significant relationship (R2â¯=â¯0.99) was also obtained between the Ks and S optimized from the experimental curves using a βâ¯=â¯1.1 and the corresponding values obtained by simultaneous optimization of the three hydraulic parameters. These results demonstrated that S and Ks can be accurately estimated using a constant β and that downward infiltration is not an appropriate procedure to estimate β.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Earth-Surface Processes
Authors
B. Latorre, D. Moret-Fernández, L. Lassabatere, M. Rahmati, M.V. López, R. Angulo-Jaramillo, R. Sorando, F. ComÃn, J.J. Jiménez,