Comparison of three hydraulic property measurement methods

Abstract

Hydraulic functions of soils may differ depending on the different measuring methods used. The performance of three different methods for measuring soil-hydraulic properties of a heterogeneous field were evaluated. The experiments were conducted using three different sizes of undisturbed soil cores collected systematically along a 31 m long transect of a well drained sandy loam soil having three soil horizons (Ap, 0-0.25 m; Cl, 0.25–0.55 m; C2, 0.55–1.00 m). The laboratory studies involved: (1) detailed unsteady drainage-flux experiments performed on fifteen columns of 1 m length and 0.3 m diameter; (2) combined crust test and hot-air methods applied to thirty columns of 0.2 m length and 0.2 m diameter and to a subset of sixty cylinders of 0.1 m length and 0.045 m diameter, respectively, taken from the Ap horizon; and (3) desorption experiments carried out on a total of one hundred eighty cores of 0.051 m length and 0.05 m diameter collected evenly from the three horizons. Mean soil hydraulic properties were inferred from experimental data characterizing either selected depths or the soil profile as a whole. The results revealed considerable differences among estimated mean soil properties as obtained with different measuring techniques. Although the application of scaling theory substantially reduced variation in the measured pressure heads ( h) and conductivities ( K), the results revealed that scaling parameters determined from soil pressure head were not identical to scaling factors determined from hydraulic conductivity. The results also show that K scaling factors in general were much more variable than h scaling factors, and that the observed variability in scaling factors also depend upon the measurement technique used.