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Thermal conductivity of mineral soils relates linearly to air‐filled porosity
Author(s) -
Xie Xiaoting,
Lu Yili,
Ren Tusheng,
Horton Robert
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
soil science society of america journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1435-0661
pISSN - 0361-5995
DOI - 10.1002/saj2.20016
Subject(s) - porosity , soil water , saturation (graph theory) , soil science , mineralogy , thermal conductivity , bulk density , water saturation , fraction (chemistry) , materials science , mathematics , chemistry , environmental science , composite material , chromatography , combinatorics
Soil thermal conductivity (λ) depends largely on the volume fractions of soil solids, air and water. Previous studies focus mainly on developing saturation or soil water content (θ) dependent λ models. There are reports that λ is correlated more with air‐filled porosity ( n a ) than with θ, and the correlation is less affected by solid fraction and λ of soil solids. In this study, a simple linear relationship between λ and n a is developed with both newly measured and published datasets. Independent evaluations showed good agreement between estimated and measured λ values with root mean square errors less than 0.24 W m −1 K −1 , indicating that the linear λ‐ n a relationship could be used to approximate λ from n a with satisfactory accuracy.