Local‐ and field‐scale stochastic‐advective vertical solute transport in horizontally heterogeneous unsaturated soils

Abstract

AbstractDescription of field‐scale solute transport in unsaturated soils is essential for assessing the degree of contamination, estimating fluxes past a control plane and for designing remedial measures. The flow field is usually described by numerical solution of the Richards equation followed by numerical solution of the advection‐dispersion equation to describe contaminant movement. These numerical solutions are highly complex, and do not provide the insights that are possible from simpler analytical representations. In this study, analytical solutions at the local scale are developed to describe purely advective vertical transport of a conservative solute along the principle characteristic of the flow field. Local‐scale model development is simplified by using a sharp‐front approximation for water movement. These local solutions are then upscaled to field‐scale solute transport by adopting a lognormally distributed horizontal hydraulic conductivity field to represent the natural heterogeneity observed in field soils. Analytical expressions are developed for the mean behavior of solute transport at the field scale. Comparisons with experimental observations find that trends of field‐scale solute behavior are reasonably reproduced by the model. The accuracy of the proposed solution improves with increasing spatial variability in the hydraulic conductivity as revealed by further comparisons with numerical results of the Richards equation‐based field‐scale solute movement. In some cases, the sharp‐front approximation may lead to anomalous field‐scale behavior depending on the role of pre and postponded conditions in the field, and this limitation is discussed. The proposed method shows promise for describing field‐scale solute movement in loamy sand and sandy loam soils.