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Soil Physical Data and Modeling Soil Moisture Flow Soil physical data and modeling soil moisture flow J.G.Wesseling Soil physical data and modeling soil moisture flow J.G.Wesseling 2009 i Promotor: Prof. Dr. C.J. Ritsema Hoogleraar Fysische Bodemkwaliteit Promotiecommissie: Prof. Dr. Ir. T.S. Steenhuis (Cornell University, U.S.A.) Dr. Ing. J. Stolte (Bioforsk, Noorwegen) Prof. Dr. Ir. M.F.P. Bierkens (Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, Nederland) Prof. Dr. Ir. O. Oenema (Wageningen UR, Nederland) ii Soil physical data and modeling soil moisture flow J.G.Wesseling Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor op gezag van de rector magnificus van Wageningen Universiteit Prof. Dr. M.J. Kropff in het openbaar te verdedigen op maandag 12 januari 2009 ‘s middags om 13.30 uur in de Aula. iii Wesseling, J.G. 2009. Soil physical data and modeling soil moisture flow. Ph.D.-thesis Wageningen UR., 179 pp., 53 figures, 15 tables. ISBN 978-90-8585-308-4. Keywords: Moisture flow, soil physical relationships, moisture retention, hydraulic conductivity, soil physical classes, numerical model. Dit onderzoek is uitgevoerd binnen de onderzoekschool PE&RC. iv Wesseling, J.G. 2009. Soil physical data and modeling soil moisture flow . Ph.D.- thesis, Wageningen UR, The Netherlands. 179 pp., 53 figures, 15 tables. Abstract The main objectives of this study were to describe soil physical functions in a mathematically more accurate way, to investigate the soundness of the Staring Series soil physical database, to develop and apply a new 1-D soil moisture flow simulation model and to expand the Staring Series with data on coarse textured soils. It appeared that a cubical splines method using a Mean Distance from Point to Line (MDPL) object function significantly increases fitting results of soil moisture and hydraulic conductivity data compared with other approaches currently in use. A detailed analysis of the well-known Staring Series reveals that samples grouped into a single Staring Series class often show large differences in hydrological behaviour. Furthermore, differences between the Staring Series classes are often not statistically significant, indicating that grouping of samples should be done according to other criteria than texture and organic matter alone. A new 1-D soil moisture flow model has been developed containing several unique features, like the cubical splines method and different irrigation criteria. For a series of coarse sand mixtures soil physical properties were determined and hydrologically evaluated. Small differences in textural composition may lead to large differences in irrigation requirements. Additionally, a software package has been developed to visualize 2-D soil water content changes in time as animated movies. The software package has been tested and used for multiple datasets from the Netherlands. v I dedicate this thesis to my wife and children vi Acknowledgement I am indebted to my promotor, Prof. Coen Ritsema, for stimulating me to do the research and writing the papers this thesis is based upon. Coen, our coincidental meeting 5 years ago has caused a lot of changes for me. At that time you had a lot of work to do for a software-engineer but nobody in your department had the time or the knowledge to do the job. As the combination of research and software engineering was very attractive, I was interested. After some negotiations between our departments, I was allowed to move temporarily to your team and to start my present work. Initially I started developing dedicated software, but more and more I could use my knowledge and experience as a hydrologist in combination with the software engineering tasks. I think it has been a fruitful cooperation and hope we can continue it for quite some years! Enough plans have been made already, and I trust we will continue with the same pace and enjoyment. After three years ‘temporary’ was changed into ‘permanent’. The present head of our team, Arie van Kekem, deserves my gratitude for his cooperation and willingness to allow me preparing the papers for this Ph.D.-thesis. I appreciate the understanding of my colleagues and project leaders (Hans Kros, Rick Wiegers, Jaco van de Gaast, Henk Vroon, Harry Massop, Jan van Bakel, Bram de Vos, Marius Heinen, Erik van den Elsen) for the sometimes delayed delivery of project results. I have been often too busy submitting papers to scientific journals and reusing them thereafter. My colleagues Louis Dekker and Klaas Oostindie stimulated me and taught me a lot of things about field work, laboratory work and the influence of water repellency on moisture flow. We jointly published a whole series of applied and scientific papers and reports during the past few years. On the other hand, sometimes our colleagues could not understand our laughing and teasing each other. I am also grateful to Klaas for making the majority of the figures in this thesis. Louis has applied his tremendous vii reviewing skill to all the papers and came up with a lot of good suggestions for improvements. Klaas and Louis, thanks for these pleasant years! Of course I thank all my roommates Louis, Klaas, Cathelijne and Jantiene for bringing me numerous cups of tea, coffee and hot chocolate to keep me active. Finally (but certainly not the least important) I wish to thank my wife Monique and our children Piotr, Klaudia, Marian, Marcin and Patryk for giving me the opportunity to spend a lot of evenings and weekends preparing this thesis. Monique and Marian, thanks for designing the cover of this thesis. Marian, thanks for supplying the cover photo’s. viii Contents 1 Introduction 5 1.1 Background 5 1.2 Types of numerical models 5 1.3 Description of soil physical properties 6 1.3.1 Measuring and estimating soil physical properties 7 1.3.2 Use of pedotransfer functions 9 1.3.3 Available soil physical databases 10 1.4 Objectives of the study and outline of this thesis 10 2 Describing the soil physical characteristics of soil samples with cubical splines 15 2.1 Introduction 16 2.2 Material and methods 18 2.2.1 Soil moisture flow 18 2.2.2 Analytical approximations of soil moisture retention and hydraulic conductivity functions 19 2.2.3 Splines 21 2.2.4 Parameter estimation 24 2.2.5 Software to estimate the points of the optimal spline functions 31 2.3 Results and discussion 32 2.3.1 Fitting K(h)-relationships 33 2.3.2 Fitting h( ) and K(h) 36 2.3.3 How many points are required? 38 2.3.4 The influence of the objective function 39 2.4 Conclusions 40 1 3 Soil physical classes: an evaluation of the Staring Series and directions for improvement 43 3.1 Introduction 44 3.2 Theory 46 3.3 Materials and methods 48 3.3.1 The Staring Series 48 3.3.2 The Priapus database 49 3.3.3 Steady-state moisture flow 52 3.3.4 Transient moisture flow 52 3.4 Results and discussion 55 3.4.1 Steady-state moisture flow 55 3.4.2 Transient moisture flow 57 3.4.3 Statistical analysis 65 3.5 Conclusions 66 4 A new, flexible and widely applicable software package for the simulation of one-dimensional moisture flow: SoWaM 71 4.1 Introduction 72 4.2 Theory of soil moisture flow 73 4.2.1 The governing equations 73 4.2.2 Analytical approximation of soil moisture retention and hydraulic conductivity functions 74 4.3 Description of the software package 76 4.3.1 General 76 4.3.2 SoWaMData 77 4.3.3 SoWaMCalc module 78 4.3.4 SoWaMVis module 83 4.3.5 SoWaMSoil module 84 4.3.6 SoWaMFit module 88 2 4.3.7 SoWaMDrain module 89 4.4 Comparison of SoWaM to other models 89 4.5 Conclusions 91 5 The effect of soil texture and organic amendment on the hydrological behavior of coarse-textured soils 93 5.1 Introduction 94 5.2 Materials and methods 96 5.2.1 The sand mixtures 96 5.2.2 Soil physical relationships 97 5.2.3 Model simulations 98 5.3 Results and discussion 100 5.3.1 Characteristics of the samples 100 5.3.2 Model simulations 106 5.4 Conclusions 111 6 Irrigation of a golf course in the southern part of The Netherlands: simulation versus practice 113 6.1 Introduction 114 6.2 Materials and methods 114 6.3 Results and discussion 116 6.4 Conclusion 118 7 Animating measured precipitation and soil moisture data 121 7.1 Introduction 122 7.2 Processing the data 123 7.2.1 General 123 7.2.2 Dataflow 124 7.2.3 Precipitation 124 7.2.4 Moisture content 126 3 7.3 Creating animations 129 7.4 Final remarks 133 8 Synthesis 137 8.1 Achieved results 137 8.2 Main conclusions 140 8.3 Discussion 141 8.3.1 Added value of the thesis 141 8.3.2 Limitations of the study 142 8.3.3 Potential institutional and policy implications 143 8.3.4 Research needs 144 References 147 Summary 167 Summary 167 Samenvatting 171 List of symbols 177 Curriculum Vitae 179 4 1 Introduction 1.1 Background Soil moisture flow is an essential process in our environment. It is of importance to us because i) crops need soil moisture to grow, ii) it determines the workability of a soil, iii) it is the main transport medium for solutes, plant nutrition, pesticides and pollutants, iv) it influences surface runoff and thus flooding hazard and the need for surface water control, and v) part of our drinking water is obtained from the groundwater. For all of these reasons, it is important to understand the process of soil moisture flow and solute transport, both in the unsaturated and the saturated part of the soil.
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