Effects of Soil Water Salinity on Field Soil Hydraulic Functions
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 137, Issue 5
Abstract
Unsaturated soil hydraulic parameters and functions used in numerical models to simulate water flow and solute transport in the unsaturated zone are generally considered invariant of soil water salinity levels. This study uses 5 years of field soil water salinity levels at three observation sites from the Land Retirement Demonstration Project (LRDP) (2006) located in western Fresno County, California, to test the hypothesis that field unsaturated soil hydraulic properties are also a function of soil water salinity level. The HYDRUS-1D software package for simulating one-dimensional (1D) movement of water, heat, and multiple solutes in variably saturated media, and Parameter Estimation (PEST), a model-independent parameter optimizer, is used to optimize the soil hydraulic parameters and downward bottom flux corresponding to three different average soil salinity levels at each site. The results show that at the same pressure head, soil water content is less with higher soil water salinity as compared with lower soil water salinity. It is thus concluded that the use of soil water salinity invariant soil water hydraulic parameters in numerical modeling can seriously compromise predictions, especially for a variable soil water salinity environment.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research work has been financed by UNSPECIFIEDUniversity of California Salinity and Drainage Program. The writers would like to acknowledge the positive feedback and comments from the anonymous reviewers which contributed to improving the paper.
References
Belitz, K., and Heimes, F. J. (1990). “Character and evolution of the ground-water flow system in the central part of the western San Joaquin Valley, California.” Water Supply Paper 2348, USGS, Denver.
Brooks, R. H., and Corey, A. T. (1964). “Hydraulic properties of a porous media.” Hydrology Paper No. 3, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO.
Chawla, K. L., Khosla, B. K., and Sharma, D. R. (1983). “Hydraulic properties of a sandy loam soil as influenced by salinisation and desalinisation.” Irrig. Sci., 4(4), 247–254.
Doherty, J., Brebber, L., and Whyte, P. (2004). “PEST: Model-independent parameter estimation.” Watermark, Victoria, Australia.
Erysian, S., et al. (2005). “Land retirement demonstration project five-year report.” Interagency Land Retirement Team, United States Department of the Interior (USDI), Fresno, CA.
Fripiat, J., Cases, J., Francois, M., and Letellier, M. (1982). “Thermodynamic and microdynamic behavior of water in clay suspensions and gels.” J. Colloid Interface Sci., 89(2), 378–400.
Harter, T., and Zhang, D. X. (1999). “Water flow and solute spreading in heterogeneous soils with spatially variable water content.” Water Resour. Res., 35(2), 415–426.
Kool, J. B., Parker, J. C., and Vangenuchten, M. T. (1987). “Parameter-estimation for unsaturated flow and transport models—A review.” J. Hydrol., 91(3-4), 255–293.
Land Retirement Demonstration Project (LRDP). (2006). 〈http://esrp.csustan.edu/projects/lrdp/landretirement〉 (Aug. 18, 2006).
Levy, G. J., Goldstein, D., and Mamedov, A. I. (2005). “Saturated hydraulic conductivity of semiarid soils: Combined effects of salinity, sodicity, and rate of wetting.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 69(3), 653–662.
McIntyre, D. S. (1979). “Exchangeable sodium, subplasticity and hydraulic conductivity of some Australian soils.” Aust. J. Soil Res., 17, 115–120.
McNeal, B. L., and Coleman, N. T. (1966). “Effect of solution composition on soil hydraulic conductivity.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 30(3), 308–312.
Mitchell, J. K., and Soga, K. (2005). Fundamentals of soil behavior, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.
Mualem, Y. (1976). “New model for predicting hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated porous media.” Water Resour. Res., 12(3), 513–522.
Quirk, J. P., and Schofield, R. K. (1955). “The effect of electrolyte concentration on soil permeability.” J. Soil Sci., 6(2), 163–178.
Schoups, G. (2004). “Regional-scale hydrologic modeling of subsurface water flow and reactive salt transport in the western San Joaquin Valley, California.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Univ. of California, Davis.
Scotter, D. R., and Loveday, J. (1966). “Physical changes in seedbed material resulting from the application of dissolved gypsum.” Aust. J. Soil Res. 4, 69–75.
Simunek, J., and Bradford, S. A. (2008). “Vadose zone modeling: Introduction and importance.” Vadose Zone J., 7(2), 581–586.
Simunek, J., van Genuchten, M. T., and Sejna, M. (2005). “The HYDRUS-1D software package for simulating one-dimensional movement of water, heat, and multiple solutes in variably saturated media.” United States Salinity Laboratory, USDA, Riverside, CA.
Simunek, J., Wendroth, O., and van Genuchten, M. T. (1999). “Estimating unsaturated soil hydraulic properties from laboratory tension disc infiltrometer experiments.” Water Resour. Res., 35(10), 2965–2979.
Singh, P. N., and Wallender, W. W. (2008). “Effects of adsorbed water layer in predicting saturated hydraulic conductivity for clays with Kozeny-Carman equation.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 134(6), 829–836.
Singh, P. N., Wallender, W. W., Maneta, M. P., Lee, S. L., and Olsen, B. A. (2010). “Sustainable root zone salinity and shallow water table in the context of land retirement.” J. Irrig. Drain Eng., 136(5), 289–299.
Suarez, D. R., and Taber, P. (2007). “Numerical software package for estimating changes in solution composition due to changes in soil water content.” United States Salinity Laboratory, USDA, Riverside, CA.
Tedeschi, A., Hamminga, W., Postiglione, L., and Menenti, M. (1996). “Sustainable irrigation scheduling: Effects of saline water on soil physical properties.” Irrigation scheduling: From theory to practice, Water Rep. 8, M. Smith, L. S. Pereira, J. Berengena, B. Itier, J. Goussard, R. Ragab, L. Tollefson, and P. van Hofwegen, eds., Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN/International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, Rome, Italy, 195–204.
Thayalakumaran, T., Bethune, M. G., and McMahon, T. A. (2007). “Achieving a salt balance—Should it be a management objective?” Agric. Water Manage., 92(1-2), 1–12.
van Dam, J. C., and Feddes, R. A. (2000). “Numerical simulation of infiltration, evaporation and shallow groundwater levels with the Richards equation.” J. Hydrol., 233(1—4), 72–85.
van Genuchten, M. T. (1980). “A closed-form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 44(5), 892–898.
Warrence, N. J., Bauder, J. W., and Pearson, K. E. (2002). “Basics of salinity and sodicity effects on soil physical properties.” Montana State Univ., Bozeman, MT, 〈http://waterquality.montana.edu/docs/methane/basics.shtml〉.
Zhu, Y. X., and Granick, S. (2001). “Viscosity of interfacial water.” Phys. Rev. Lett., 87, 096104.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 137 • Issue 5 • May 2011
Pages: 295 - 303
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 21, 2009
Accepted: Aug 31, 2010
Published online: Sep 3, 2010
Published in print: May 1, 2011
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.