Unsaturated hydraulic property measurements of subtropical anthropogenic (purple) soils in China.
2024
ZHUANG, L. | CHEN, H. | YAN, P. | LIANG, X. | TEIXEIRA, W. G. | VAN GENUCHTEN, M. T. | LIN, K. | LUWEN ZHUANG, SUN YAT-SEN UNIVERSITY | HAO CHEN, SUN YAT‐SEN UNIVERSITY | PING YAN, GUANGZHOU INSTITUTE OF GEOGRAPHY | XINGMEI LIANG, SUN YAT‐SEN UNIVERSITY | WENCESLAU GERALDES TEIXEIRA, CNPS | MARTINUS TH. VAN GENUCHTEN, UTRECHT UNIVERSITY | KAIRONG LIN, SUN YAT‐SEN UNIVERSITY.
Many anthropogenic soils, often referred to as red bed or purple soils, are distributed in various areas of southern China. Purple soils typically are highly weathered and often lead to natural and engineering hazards because of their relatively poor water retention properties. Knowledge of the unsaturated soil hydraulic properties of purple soils is crucial for their optimal management and various assessment studies. In this work, the hydraulic properties of purple soils from southern China were measured in the laboratory over the full moisture range using a combination of evaporation (HYPROP) and psychrometer (WP4C) approaches. Measured data were analyzed in terms of four different unimodal and bimodal soil hydraulic models. The measurements and analyses showed that bimodality was not overly significant for most samples. The good fit of the Peters–Durner–Iden models furthermore suggested that corner and film flows were important under relative dry conditions. Existing soil pedotransfer functions were found to provide a fairly close match for the slope of water retention curves with the exception of near saturated water contents and the saturated conductivity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that unsaturated hydraulic data of purple soils are provided over the full moisture range.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária