Krj. Smettem et Pj. Gregory, THE RELATION BETWEEN SOIL-WATER RETENTION AND PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTION PARAMETERS FOR SOME PREDOMINANTLY SANDY WESTERN-AUSTRALIAN SOILS, Australian Journal of Soil Research, 34(5), 1996, pp. 695-708
The soil water retention curve (WRC) may be estimated from soil textur
e if there is shape similarity between the normalised cumulative parti
cle mass size distribution curve (PSD) and the WRC. For similar shaped
curves, parameters describing the shape of the PSD may also describe
the shape of the corresponding WRC. We studied the relation between PS
Ds and WRCs at 4 sites in Western Australia with predominantly sandy s
oils and fitted a sigmoidal function to all normalised PSDs and WRCs.
The model gave an excellent description of all PSD and WRC data sets.
The parameter describing the slope of the WRC was correlated with the
slope of the PSD. However, the asymptotic minima of the PSDs differed
from the WRCs leading to poor estimates of the WRC residual water cont
ents, theta(r). This difference was most marked in 2 clay subsoils and
resulted in progressively greater errors in prediction of water conte
nt with increasing negative pressure head.