Simulation of Heterogeneous Soil Water Flow Using the Active Region Model

Preferential flow in the unsaturated soil is an important and common phenomenon, which is difficult to be characterized. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the Active Region Model (ARM), which incorporated the fractal flow patterns into the continuum approach, has been developed to characterize preferential water flow in the unsaturated zone. Experiments were conducted to measure water flow process in a bare soil landfill cover and a ET landfill cover. Modeling analysis indicated that the water content distributions could be simulated generally well with the ARM by considering preferential flow in the porous media. Compared with the ARM, the continuum model underestimated percolation for both bare soil and vegetation coved plots.