Prediction of water retention characteristics from soil compaction data and organic matter content

Abstract

Field soils often become compacted due to the untimely use of farm vehicles under a very tight calendar of farming operations. Soil compaction causes a significant deterioration of the structure of the top-soil which, in turn, affects the availability of water to plant roots. The latter can be estimated from a soil moisture retention curve. However, the curve is not a routinely measured soil property. Therefore, many empirical models have been proposed to estimate it from other, readily available, soil physical properties. Most of these models, however, are applicable to uncompacted soils. In this paper, we propose an empirical model that can estimate the soil moisture retention curve of any compacted soil. The soil physical properties that are required to estimate the model parameters are: bulk density, organic matter content, liquid limit and level of compaction.