Verification of Appropriateness of Selected Pedotransfer Functions for the Basic Use in Agriculture of the Czech Republic

Abstract

Soil is a huge reservoir of water used by plants in periods without precipitation and significantly affects the hydrological balance of any territory. To evaluate the hydrological balance of any piece of the land given, it is therefore necessary to carry out the analysis of the hydro-physical conditions. To speed up and simplify the determination of basic hydro-physical properties of soil man developed and began to use the so-called pedotransfer functions (PTF). Comparison of domestic and foreign works, however, faces problems such as the definition of available water supplies in different countries. In the research project “Specification of the available supplies of nitrogen and water in the soil profile and determining the effective depth of crops’ roots” we have dealt with the selection of suitable pedotransfer functions necessary for basic agricultural production with the requirement of minimal amount of input data. For our research we chose several PTFs developed and used in the Czech Republic for a long time, with a minimum of input data, and several new PTFs from foreign authors with greater correlation, but also a greater need of input data, and we compared each other. The best correlation between values and the pedotransfer function for the field water capacity and for the wilting point seems to be the PTF according to Tomasella and PTF according to Batjes. Pedotransfer function according to Váša, in terms of volume of input data, appears better.