Abstract
A new method for the rapid plotting of the soil water retention curve (SWRC) has been proposed that considers the soil water as an environment limited by the soil solid phase on one side and by the soil air on the other side. Both contact surfaces have surface energies, which play the main role in water retention. The use of an idealized soil model with consideration for the nonequilibrium thermodynamic laws and the aerodynamic similarity principles allows us to estimate the volumetric specific surface areas of soils and, using the proposed pedotransfer function (PTF), to plot the SWRC. The volumetric specific surface area of the solid phase, the porosity, and the specific free surface energy at the water-air interface are used as the SWRC parameters. Devices for measuring the parameters are briefly described. The differences between the proposed PTF and the experimental data have been analyzed using the statistical processing of the data.
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Original Russian Text © V.V. Alekseev, I.I. Maksimov, 2013, published in Pochvovedenie, 2013, No. 7, pp. 822–828.
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Alekseev, V.V., Maksimov, I.I. Aerodynamic method for obtaining the soil water retention curve. Eurasian Soil Sc. 46, 751–757 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229313070028
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229313070028