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Solute Dispersion in Unsaturated Heterogeneous Soil at Field Scale: I. Theory
Author(s) -
Dagan Gedeon,
Bresler Eshel
Publication year - 1979
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 - 10.2136/sssaj1979.03615995004300030008x
Subject(s) - hydraulic conductivity , scaling , randomness , soil science , dispersion (optics) , field (mathematics) , mathematics , statistical physics , environmental science , soil water , physics , statistics , geometry , pure mathematics , optics
In a heterogenous field whose hydraulic properties vary from point to point the transport of solute also differs from profile to profile. In this paper solute concentration on the field scale was treated as a random variable. The field heterogeneity was described in terms of the statistical distribution of the hydraulic parameters, which implies a corresponding distribution of the concentration. Equations for computing this distribution, as well as its average and variance, in a heterogeneous field were derived explicitly for a simple, but representative case, of leaching under random recharge distribution on the surface. The water and solute flow in unsaturated soil was assumed to be vertical and steady. The randomness of the hydraulic properties was reduced to that of the saturated hydraulic conductivity by adopting a scaling hypothesis and a log normal distribution.