Process-based agricultural system models require detailed description of soil hydraulic properties that are usually not available. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the sensitivity of model simulation results to variability in measured soil hydraulic properties and to compare simulation results using measured and default soil parameters. To do so, we measured soil water retention cu...

In this paper we investigate the combined effect of nonstationarity in log hydraulic conductivity and the presence of boundaries on flow in heterogeneous aquifers. We derive general equations governing the statistical moments of hydraulic head for steady state flow by perturbation expansions. Due to their mathematical complexity, we solve the moment equations by the numerical technique of finit...

Data obtained from modified cone penetrometer experiments were used to estimate the hysteretic soil hydraulic properties with a parameter estimation technique which combined a numerical solution of the Richards equation with Marquardt-Levenberg optimization. The modified cone penetrometer was designed to inject water into a soil through a cylindrical screen, measure the infiltration rate with t...

When tree stems are mechanically stimulated, a rapid long-distance signal is induced that slows down primary growth. An investigation was carried out to determine whether the signal might be borne by a mechanically induced pressure pulse in the xylem. Coupling xylem flow meters and pressure sensors with a mechanical testing device, the hydraulic effects of mechanical deformation of tree stem an...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) proliferate in soils and are known to affect soil structure. Although their contribution to structure is extensively investigated, the consequences of those processes for soil water extractability and transport has, so far, gained surprisingly little attention. Therefore we asked, whether AMF can affect water retention and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity un...

[1] Most analytical and numerical models developed to analyze pumping test data focus on saturated flow below the water table. Traditionally the soil above the initial water table prior to pumping has been thought to have little influence on the test results and has usually been ignored. It is hypothesized that, if the unsaturated zone is capped by low-permeability soil, airflow in the unsatura...

abstract saturated water content is one of the important parameters which its measurement is necessary in estimation of soil water retention and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curves. in several researches, saturated water content is assumed to be equal to soil total porosity. in some others, its value is estimated by pedotransfer functions using readily available parameters, such as bulk d...

The most common form of onsite domestic wastewater treatment in the United States is the septic system. Although the design of these systems has been well established, no systematic evaluation of septic system performance exists for sloping hardpan soils. In this paper, we develop a simple hydrologic model for assessing the probability of failure for a set of hydrologic conditions, septic loadi...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) proliferate in soil pores, on the surface of soil particles and affect soil structure. Although modifications in substrate moisture retention depend on structure and could influence plant water extraction, mycorrhizal impacts on water retention and hydraulic conductivity were rarely quantified. Hence, we asked whether inoculation with AMF affects substrate wat...