Trickle Irrigation as a Simple Tool to Estimate Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity

The saturated hydraulic conductivity of soil is needed for deteriming the agricultural and hydrological processes. The measurement techniques used to estimate such property remain hampered by extensive labor and time constraints. Both emitter discharge rate and steady saturated radius emerged from point source trickle irrigation on the soil surface were used to determine the saturated hydraulic conductivity using Wooding’s equation. Field experiments on sandy and sandy loam soils were conducted to estimate the saturated hydraulic conductivity based on point source trickle irrigation. The results showed that predicted saturated hydraulic conductivity values were within 23% and 26 % of measured values as estimated by constant head method under libratory condition.Additionally, the Wooding’s equation was found to produce equally or more accurate descriptions of saturated hydraulic conductivity as compared to several published pedotransfer functions (PTFs) used to estimate the saturated hydraulic conductivity.