Modeling Soil Solute Release into Runoff and Transport with Runoff on a Loess Slope
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 5
Abstract
Rainfall results in the transfer of chemicals from soil to surface runoff. A physically-based solute transport model was developed for estimating the solute concentration in runoff originating from the soil surface. The model accounts for the effects of soil infiltration, raindrops, the water runoff rate, and the return flow, all of which influence the concentration of the solutes in the runoff. It was assumed that the depth of mixing zone changed with the varieties of the raindrop hits, return flow, and overland flow. It was also assumed that runoff and soil in the mixing zone mixed instantaneously and that the solute in the soil beneath the mixing zone was moved to the mixing zone by diffusion. The mixing zone was included in the model and was based on the deposited layer or shield concept. To test the model, laboratory experiments were carried out that used two soil types that were exposed to simulated rainfall. The results simulated by the model were highly correlated with the experimental data. In the first few minutes after rainfall began, the solute concentration in the runoff was mainly controlled by the rainfall rate and solute concentration in the mixing zone; higher solute levels in the mixing zone resulted in higher solute concentrations in runoff. When the solute concentration in the runoff stabilized, the solute concentration in the runoff was mainly controlled by the diffusion of solutes from the soil beneath the mixing zone. The simulated data showed a high level of correlation with the measured data for both runoff volume and solute concentration in the runoff. This demonstrates that the model captured the temporal behavior of the runoff and solute transport in the runoff.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the projects of the National Basic Research Program of China (2011CB411903). Thanks to the referees for suggestions and helpful comments.
References
Ahuja, L. R. (1990). “Modeling soluble chemical transfer to runoff with rainfall impact as a diffusion process.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 54(2), 312–321.
Ahuja, L. R., and Lehman, O. R. (1983). “The extent and nature of rainfall-soil interaction in the release of soluble chemicals to runoff.” J. Environ. Qual., 12(1), 34–40.
Ahuja, L. R., Sharpley, A. N., and Lehman, O. R. (1982). “Effect of soil slope and rainfall characteristics on phosphorus in runoff.” J. Environ. Qual., 11(1), 9–13.
Ahuja, L. R., Sharpley, A. N., Yamamoto, M., and Menzel, R. G. (1981). “The depth of rainfall-runoff-soil interaction as determined by .” Water Resour. Res., 17(4), 969–974.
Bear, J., and Bachmat, Y. (1990). Introduction to modelling phenomena of transport in porous media, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, Netherlands.
Bennett, C. O., and Myers, J. E. (1982). Momentum, heat, and mass transfer, 3rd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York.
Bresler, E. (1973). “Simultaneous transport of solutes and water under transient unsaturated flow conditions.” Water Resour. Res., 9(4), 975–986.
Brooks, R. H., and Corey, A. J. (1964). Hydraulic properties of porous media, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO.
Deng, Z. Q. (2002). “Theoretical investigation into longitudinal dispersion in natural rivers.” Ph.D. dissertation, Lund Univ., Lund, Sweden.
Deng, Z. Q., de Lima, J. L. M. P., and Singh, V. P. (2005). “Transport rate-based model for overland flow and solution transport: Parameter estimation and process simulation.” J. Hydrol., 315(1–4), 220–235.
Donigian, A. S., Beyerlein, D. C. Jr., Davis, H. H., and Crawford, N. H. (1997). “Agricultural runoff management (ARM) model, version II, Refinement and Testing, USEPA.”, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Environmental Research Laboratory, Athens, GA.
Gao, B., et al. (2005). “Investigating raindrop effects on transport of sediment and non-sorbed chemicals from soil to surface runoff.” J. Hydrol., 308(1–4), 313–320.
Gao, B., Walter, M. T., Steenhuis, T. S., Hogarth, W. L., and Parlange, J. Y. (2004). “Rain induced chemical transport from soil to runoff: Theory and experiments.” J. Hydrol., 295(1–4), 291–304.
Green, T., and Houke, D. F. (1979). “The mixing of rain with near surface water.” J. Fluid Mech., 90(3), 569–588.
Hairsine, P. B., and Rose, C. W. (1991). “Rainfall detachment and deposition: Sediment transport in the absence of flow-driven processes.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 55(2), 320–324.
Havis, R. N. (1986). “Transport from overland flow.” Ph.D. dissertation, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO.
Heilig, A., et al. (2001). “Testing of a mechanistic soil erosion model with a simple experiment.” J. Hydrol., 244(1–2), 9–16.
Ingram, J. J., and Woolhiser, D. A. (1980). “Chemical transfer into overland flow.” Proc., Symp. Watershed Management, ASCE, New York, 40–53.
Kiely, G. (1997). Environmental engineering, McGraw-Hill International (UK) Limited, Singapore.
Liang, L., and Levent Kavvas, M. (2008). “Modeling of solute transport and macrodispersion by unsteady stream flow under uncertain conditions.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 13(6), 510–520.
Liu, Q. Q., and Singh, V. P. (2004). “Effect of microtopography, slope length and gradient, and vegetative cover on overland flow through simulation.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 9(5), 375–382.
Martin, J. L., and McCutcheon, S. C. (1999). “Hydrodynamics and transport for water quality modeling.” CRC, Boca Raton, FL, 7–220.
Mutchler, C. K. (1967). “Parameters for describing raindrop splash.” J. Soil Water Conserv., 22, 91–94.
Olsen, S. R., and Kemper, W. D. (1968). “Movement of nutrients to plant roots.” Adv. Agron., 30, 91–151.
Parlange, J. Y. (1971). “Theory of water-movement in soils: I. One-dimensional absorption.” Soil Sci., 111(2), 134–137.
Parlange, J. Y. (1972). “Theory of water movement in soils: I. One-dimensional infiltration with constant flux at the surface.” Soil Sci., 114, 1–4.
Sharpley, A. N., Ahuja, L. R., Yamamoto, M., and Menzel, R. G. (1981). “The release of soil phosphorus to runoff in relation to the kinetics of desorption.” J. Environ. Qual., 10(3), 386–391.
Singh, V. P. (1996). Kinematic wave modeling in water resources: Surface-water hydrology, Wiley, New York, 897–940.
Snyder, I. K., and Woolhiser, D. A. (1985). “Effect of infiltration on chemical transport into overland flow.” Trans. ASAE, 28, 1450–1457.
Steenhuis, T. S. (2001). “Testing of a mechanistic soil erosion model with a simple experiment.” J. Hydrol., 244(1–2), 9–16.
Steenhuis, T. S., Boll, J., Shalit, G., Selker, J. S., and Merwin, I. A. (1994). “A simple equation for predicting preferential flow solute concentrations.” J. Environ. Qual., 23(5), 1058–1064.
Steenhuis, T. S., and Walter, M. F. (1980). “Closed form solution for pesticide loss in runoff water.” Trans. ASAE, 23(3), 615–628.
Tong, J. X., Yang, J. Z., and Bao, R. C. (2009). “Model for chemicals transfer to surface runoff in unsaturated soil and its analytical modeling.” J. Adv. Water Sci., 20(1), 10–17 (in Chinese).
Wallach, R. (1991). “Runoff contamination by soil chemicals-time scales approach.” Water Resour. Res., 27(2), 215–223.
Wallach, R., Grigorin, G., and Rivlin, J. (2001). “A comprehensive mathematical model for transport of soil-dissolved chemicals by overland flow.” J. Hydrol., 247(1–2), 85–99.
Wallach, R., and van Genuchten, M. T. (1990). “A physically based model for predicting solute transfer from soil solution to rainfall-induced runoff water.” Water Resour. Res., 26(9), 2119–2126.
Wallach, R., van Genuchten, M. T., and Spencer, W. F. (1989). “Modeling solute transfer from soil to surface runoff: The concept of effective depth of transfer.” J. Hydrol., 109(3–4), 307–317.
Wallach, R., William, A. J., and William, F. S. (1988). “Transfer of chemical from soil solution to surface runoff: A diffusion-based soil model.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 52(3), 612–617.
Walter, M. T., Gao, B., and Parlange, J. Y. (2007). “Modeling soil solute release into runoff with infiltration.” J. Hydrol., 347(3–4), 430–437.
Wang, Q. J., Horton, R., and Shao, M. A. (2002a). “Effective raindrop kinetic energy influence on soil potassium transport into runoff.” Soil Sci., 167(6), 369–376.
Wang, Q. J., Horton, R., and Shao, M. A. (2002b). “Horizontal infiltration method for determining Brooks-Corey model parameters.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 66(6), 1733–1739.
Wang, Q. J., Shao, M. A., Li, Z. B., and Lei, T. W. (1999). “Analysis of simulating methods for soil solute transport with runoff in Loess Plateau.” Research of Soil and Water Conservation, 2, 67–71 (in Chinese).
Wang, Q. J., and Wang, H. (2010). “Analysis on the feature of effective mixing depth model forsoil solute transporting with surface runoff on loess slope.” Hydrol. Proc., 41(6), 671–676 (in Chinese).
Wang, Q. J., Wang, W. Y., Shen, B., and Shao, M. A. (1998). “Interacting depth of rainfall-runoff-soil solute.” J. Soil Eros. Water Conserv., 2(4), 41–46 (in Chinese).
Wang, R. C. (1970). “The mechanics of a drop after striking a stagnant water layer.” Ph.D. thesis, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Illinois.
Willmott, C. J. (1982). “Some comments on the evaluation ofmodel performance.” Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 63(11), 1309–1313.
Woolhiser, D. A. (1975). “Simulation of unsteady overland flow.” Unsteady flow in open channels, Vol. 2, K. Mahmood and Y. Yevjevich, eds., Water Resources, Fort Collins, CO, 485–508.
Woolhiser, D. A., and Ligget, J. A. (1967). “Unsteady, one dimensional flow over a plane—The rising hydrograph.” Water Resour. Res., 3(3), 753–771.
Zhang, X. C., Norton, D., Lei, T., and Nearing, M. A. (1999). “Coupling mixing zone concept with convection–diffusion equation to predict chemical transfer to surface runoff.” Trans. ASAE, 42(4), 987–994.
Zhang, X. C., Norton, D., and Nearing, M. A. (1997). “Chemical transfer from soil solution to surface runoff.” Water Resour. Res., 33(4), 809–815.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 8, 2011
Accepted: Mar 23, 2012
Published online: Mar 26, 2012
Published in print: May 1, 2013
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.