Abstract
Superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) are widely applied in dryland agriculture. However, their functional property of repeated absorption and release of soil water exerts periodic effects on the hydraulic parameters and water-retention properties of soil, and as this property gradually diminishes with time, its effects tend to be unstable. During the 120-day continuous soil cultivation experiment described in this paper, horizontal soil column infiltration and high-speed centrifugation tests were conducted on SAP-treated soil to measure unsaturated diffusivityDand soil water characteristic curves. The experimental results suggest that the SAP increased the water retaining capacity of soil sections where the suction pressure was between 0 and 3,000 cm. The SAP significantly obstructed water diffusion in the soil in the early days of the experiment, but the effect gradually decreased in the later period. The average decrease in water diffusivity in the treatment groups fell from 76.6% at 0 days to 1.2% at 120 days. This research also provided parameters of time-varying functions that describe the unsaturated diffusivityDand unsaturated hydraulic conductivityKof soils under the effects of SAPs; in future research, these functions can be used to construct water movement models applicable to SAP-treated soil.
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