Development of pedotransfer functions for Brazilian soils

Willames Soares,Diogo Botelho Corrêa De Oliveira,Marco Aurelio Calixto Ribeiro De Holanda

doi:10.53660/conj-590-301

Abstract

Pedotransfer Functions (PFT’s) have several applications in the agri-environmental field, hydrodynamically characterizing soils in a less costly and more accessible way. The work proposed to develop equations that characterized Brazilian tropical soils through numerical validations available in the HYBRAS database, comparing them with others available in the literature. To analyze the performance of the proposed methods, we investigated the classical hydrodynamic parameters. The nonlinear equations obtained the best modeling, followed by the linear model and two others. When compared to the literature, the PTFs developed in this study proved to be more effective in estimating all the hydrodynamic parameters evaluated, especially those developed from multiple nonlinear regressions. However, its use in the Plinthossols, Luvisols, and Vertisols classes is not recommended since they do not belong to the database. It is also not recommended to use PTF to estimate: i) the saturated volumetric humidity in silty soils; ii) the residual volumetric humidity for soils of the textural classes Clay and Loam; iii) the parameter α in silty clay Loam, clay Loam, and silty Loam soils; and iv) the parameter n of Loam class soils.

Highlights

The hydrodynamic properties of the soil are essential information in many fields of work and agri-environmental research. They are necessary in the establishment of strategies for agronomic adaptation to climate change and for the quantification of economic and environmental impacts, which may occur due to different soil management alternatives (VENTRELLA et al, 2019; MANICI et al, 2019; CASTELLINI et al, 2020)
Most PFTs, which are available in the specialized literature, were developed and applied to temperate soils, especially when compared to those developed for tropical soils
Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) were developed using multiple linear and nonlinear regressions to estimate the parameters of the soil water retention curves proposed by van Genuchten (1980), using the Hydrophysical database for Brazilian Soils (HYBRAS) database

Summary

Introduction

The hydrodynamic properties of the soil are essential information in many fields of work and agri-environmental research. They are necessary in the establishment of strategies for agronomic adaptation to climate change and for the quantification of economic and environmental impacts, which may occur due to different soil management alternatives (VENTRELLA et al, 2019; MANICI et al, 2019; CASTELLINI et al, 2020). In the last three decades, pedotransfer functions (PTF) have been widely used to estimate the hydrodynamic properties of the soil. They relate measurable soil data (such as texture, percentages of sand, silt, and clay), apparent density, organic matter or organic carbon, and/or other quantities routinely surveyed with hydraulic parameters. PTFs from data on temperate soils have limitations when applied to tropical soils; even so, they are used worldwide, mainly for global climate modeling (TOMASELLA et al, 2000)

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Conclusion