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Comparison of soil water retention at field and laboratory scales
Author(s) -
Pachepsky Yakov,
Rawls Walter J.,
Giménez Daniel
Publication year - 2001
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/sssaj2001.652460x
Subject(s) - soil water , soil science , water content , environmental science , soil texture , field capacity , soil test , water retention , bulk density , hydrology (agriculture) , geology , geotechnical engineering
Water content and soil water matric potential are measured in different soil volumes and at different spatial scales in the laboratory and in the field. The objective of this work was to use a large database to compare field and laboratory water retention. The database consisted of 135 datasets for soil horizons of various textures. Coarse‐textured soils had the average difference between field and laboratory water contents close to zero. On the contrary, fine‐textured soils with the sand content <50% had field water contents substantially smaller than the laboratory water contents in the range of water contents from 0.45 to 0.60 cm 3 cm −3 A quadratic regression explained 70% of variability in field water contents as computed from the laboratory data. A fractal scaling of the bulk density could contribute to the observed field–lab differences in volumetric water contents for the range of high water contents.