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Novel Measurement and Assessment Tools for Monitoring and Management of Land and Water Resources in Agricultural Landscapes of Central Asia pp 145–158Cite as

A Novel Method for Quantifying Soil Hydraulic Properties

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Part of the book series: Environmental Science and Engineering ((ENVSCIENCE))

Abstract

A knowledge of soil hydraulic properties—the water retention curve and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity—is required for soil water modelling and for various studies of soil hydrology. Taking measurements using traditional techniques is time consuming, the equipment is costly and the results can be uncertain. The evaporation method is frequently used for the simultaneous determination of hydraulic functions of unsaturated soil samples, i.e. the water retention curve and hydraulic conductivity function. Due to the limited range of common tensiometers, all the methodological variations of the evaporation method suffer from the limitation that the hydraulic functions can only be determined to a maximum of 70 kPa. The extended evaporation method (EEM) overcomes this restriction. Using new cavitation tensiometers and setting the air-entry pressure of the tensiometer’s porous ceramic cup as a final tension value allow both hydraulic functions to be quantified close to the wilting point. Additionally, soil shrinkage dynamics as well as soil water hysteresis can be quantified. Here, the HYPROP system was selected, a commercial device with vertically aligned tensiometers optimised to perform evaporation measurements. The HYPROP software was developed for recording, calculating, evaluating, fitting and exporting hydrological data. A good match between the results of soil hydraulic functions was shown when those obtained from traditional methods and the extended evaporation method were compared. Systematic deviations were not found.

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Acknowledgments

Author thanks the HYPROP developer group of the UMS GmbH Munich (Dipl. Ing. Georg von Unold, Dipl. Ing. Thomas Pertasek, Dipl. Ing. Andreas Steins), Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Durner (TU Braunschweig), and Dr. Andre Peters (TU Berlin) for their cooperation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) e. V., Eberswalder Strasse 84, 15374, Muencheberg, Germany

    Uwe Schindler

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  1. Uwe Schindler
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Correspondence to Uwe Schindler .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Landscape Hydrology, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscap, Müncheberg, Brandenburg, Germany

    Lothar Mueller

  2. Kazakh Research Institute of Soil Scienc, Almaty, Kazakhstan

    Abdulla Saparov

  3. Institute of Landscape Hydrology, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscap, Müncheberg, Brandenburg, Germany

    Gunnar Lischeid

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Schindler, U. (2014). A Novel Method for Quantifying Soil Hydraulic Properties. In: Mueller, L., Saparov, A., Lischeid, G. (eds) Novel Measurement and Assessment Tools for Monitoring and Management of Land and Water Resources in Agricultural Landscapes of Central Asia. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01017-5_7

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