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Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability

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A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Earth Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 May 2025 | Viewed by 12185

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Prof. Dr. Massimo Iovino

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Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Interests: soil physics; infiltration; soil hydraulic properties; vadose zone hydrology
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Dr. Vincenzo Alagna

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Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Interests: soil hydrology; water repellency; soil physics
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Dr. Dario Autovino

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Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Interests: modelling soil water flow and solute transport; soil hydraulic properties; infiltration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Knowledge of soil hydraulic properties is crucial for simulating hydrological processes at different spatial and temporal scales. Due to the ongoing threat of climate change, water availability is becoming seriously threatened in arid and semi-arid regions, and improved understanding of the vadose zone hydrology and its implications on numerous soil functions will become a challenging issue in the coming years in attempt to optimize water resources both in agricultural, forest, and urban environments.

In this Special Issue, we focus on experimental and theoretical challenges and state-of-the-art methods to characterize, measure, and model soil hydraulic properties. To fulfill the scope of Applied Sciences, studies should aim to demonstrate how soil hydraulic properties are affected by soil management and external inputs (fertilization, pollutants, low quality irrigation water, etc.) and how they affect the hydrological processes (runoff, erosion, groundwater recharge, etc.), with a specific focus on water availability in the scenario of climate change.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Field and laboratory infiltration measurements;
Plant water availability for precision agriculture;
Inverse methods for soil hydraulic characterization;
Development of PTFs for soil hydraulic characterization at different scales;
Use of geo-physical techniques for modeling soil structure and water flow;
Modeling of preferential flows;
Remote sensing application to soil hydraulic characterization;
Interaction between soil properties and ecosystems water use efficiency;
Effects of soil use and management on physical quality and hydraulic properties;
Interactions between water quality and vadose zone hydrology;
Use of organic amendments for soil restoration;
Effects of biogeochemical processes on soil hydraulic properties;
Influence of soil hydraulic properties on water saving in water-limited environments;
Urban soils and technosoils characterization for green infrastructures.

Prof. Dr. Massimo Iovino
Dr. Vincenzo Alagna
Dr. Dario Autovino
Guest Editors

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Keywords

soil hydraulic properties
inverse modeling
PTF
soil physical quality
plant water availability
water use efficiency
vadose zone hydrology
urban soils
water saving

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Published Papers (9 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 3906 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluating the Effects of Compost, Vermicompost, and Biochar on Physical Quality of Sandy-Loam Soils

by Mirko Castellini, Cristina Bondì, Rita Leogrande, Luisa Giglio, Carolina Vitti, Marcello Mastrangelo and Vincenzo Bagarello

Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(6), 3392; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15063392 - 20 Mar 2025

Viewed by 294

Abstract

Improving the physical quality of coarse-textured soils by organic amendments requires choosing the amendment and the dose. The effects of different doses of compost, vermicompost, and biochar on soil bulk density (BD) and water retention parameters (macroporosity, P_MAC; aeration capacity, AC; plant available water capacity, PAWC; relative field capacity, RFC) were tested for two sandy-loam soils. Without any treatment, these soils had too high BD and AC values and too low P_MAC, PAWC, and RFC values. No amendment satisfactorily improved the P_MAC. Only the biochar yielded statistically significant relationships between the BD, AC, PAWC, and RFC, and the amendment rate, ar. With this amendment, aeration and water storage improved because soil water content at field capacity increased with an ar more than those at saturation and the permanent wilting point. A dose of biochar (50 t/ha in a 5-cm-thick layer) made the soil physical quality good with reference to all considered parameters was identified. A single application of a rather high amount of biochar can be expected to improve the physical quality of coarse-textured soils for a long time. The general validity of the optimal ranges of values for the considered parameters and the time dependence of amendment effects in the field require further check. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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23 pages, 3749 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Simultaneous Estimation of Soil Hydraulic and Thermal Properties Based on Multiobjective Optimization Algorithms

by Jiachen Zhang and Na Li

Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(1), 337; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15010337 - 1 Jan 2025

Viewed by 774

Abstract

Simultaneous simulations of liquid water, water vapor, and heat transport are essential for modeling unsaturated hydrological processes, especially in semi-arid and arid regions. Modeling such coupled hydrothermal processes greatly depends on accurate estimations of soil hydraulic and thermal properties. However, many contributions for estimating these parameters using inversion methods use a single observation as the objective variable, e.g., soil water content is the most common. This study employ multiobjective algorithms to evaluate the worth of different observation types in simultaneous estimations of the soil hydraulic and thermal properties in Inner Mongolia, China. The coupled hydrothermal processes are quantified by HYDRUS-1D model, within which a multialgorithm, genetically adaptive multiobjective (AMALGAM) algorithm is employed to investigate four types of observations that may be available including soil water content, soil temperature, matrix potential, and heat flux in soil profiles. Different combinations of the four measurement types are considered as objectives, resulting single-, dual-, triple-, and quadruple-objective optimization schemes. The results demonstrate that incorporating additional observation types, such as soil water content and matrix potential, significantly improves the overall simulation accuracy of the coupled model. Particularly, the soil water movement is closely linked to the observation of water content, which plays a crucial role in the inversion process. While adding temperature or heat flux to the multi-objective optimization further refines the accuracy of inversion. Considering the cost-benefit ratio of different observation types, simultaneous measurement of water content and temperature is the most practical approach for the inversion since these two variables can be observed simultaneously by the same set of probes such as with a TDR. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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15 pages, 2753 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessing Soil Physical Quality in a Layered Agricultural Soil: A Comprehensive Approach Using Infiltration Experiments and Time-Lapse Ground-Penetrating Radar Surveys

by Simone Di Prima, Gersende Fernandes, Maria Burguet, Ludmila Ribeiro Roder, Vittoria Giannini, Filippo Giadrossich, Laurent Lassabatere and Alessandro Comegna

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(20), 9268; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14209268 - 11 Oct 2024

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1579

Abstract

Time-lapse ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys, combined with automated infiltration experiments, provide a non-invasive approach for investigating the distribution of infiltrated water within the soil medium and creating three-dimensional images of the wetting bulb. This study developed and validated an experimental protocol aimed at quantifying and visualizing water distribution fluxes in layered soils under both unsaturated and saturated conditions. The 3D images of the wetting bulb significantly enhanced the interpretation of infiltration data, enabling a detailed analysis of water movement through the layered system. We used the infiltrometer data and the Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer parameters (BEST) method to determine soil capacitive indicators and evaluate the physical quality of the upper soil layer. The field survey involved conducting time-lapse GPR surveys alongside infiltration experiments between GPR repetitions. These experiments included both tension and ponding tests, designed to sequentially activate the soil matrix and the full pore network. The results showed that the soil under study exhibited significant soil aeration and macroporosity (represented by AC and p_MAC), while indicators related to microporosity (such as PAWC and RFC) were notably low. The RFC value of 0.55 m³ m⁻³ indicated the soil’s limited capacity to retain water relative to its total pore volume. The PAWC value of 0.10 m³ m⁻³ indicated a scarcity of micropores ranging from 0.2 to 30 μm in diameter, which typically hold water accessible to plant roots within the total porosity. The saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, K_s, values ranged from 192.2 to 1031.0 mm h⁻¹, with a mean of 424.4 mm h⁻¹, which was 7.9 times higher than the corresponding unsaturated hydraulic conductivity measured at a pressure head of h = −30 mm (K₋₃₀). The results indicated that the upper soil layer supports root proliferation and effectively drains excess water to the underlying limestone layer. However, this layer has limited capacity to store and supply water to plant roots and acts as a restrictive barrier, promoting non-uniform downward water movement, as revealed by the 3D GPR images. The observed difference in hydraulic conductivity between the two layers suggests that surface ponding and overland flow are generated through a saturation excess mechanism. Water percolating through the soil can accumulate above the limestone layer, creating a shallow perched water table. During extreme rainfall events, this water table may rise, leading to the complete saturation of the soil profile. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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15 pages, 3299 KiB

Open AccessArticle

High-Resolution Estimation of Soil Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity via Upscaling and Karhunen–Loève Expansion within DREAM_(ZS)

by Yang Xia and Na Li

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(11), 4521; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14114521 - 24 May 2024

Viewed by 923

Abstract

Quantification of the soil hydraulic conductivity is key to the study of water flow and solute transport in unsaturated soils. Rapid advances in measurement technology have provided a large number of observations at different scales, offering unprecedented opportunities and challenges for the estimation of hydraulic parameters. This paper proposes an inverse estimation method for downscaling of observations on coarse scales to estimate hydraulic parameters on high-resolution scales. Due to the significant spatial heterogeneity, the inversion faces the problems of dynamics-based integration of data at different scales, model uncertainty due to hundreds and thousands of parameters, and computational consumption due to the large number of forward simulations. To overcome these problems, this paper uses an efficient Bayesian optimization

{DREAM}_{(ZS)}

as an inverse framework, and incorporates an analytical upscaling method and Karhunen–Loève (KL) expansion to infer finer-scale saturated hydraulic conductivity distribution conditioned on coarse-scale measurements. The efficient upscaling method is used to link measurements and hydraulic parameters at different scales, and Karhunen–Loève (KL) expansion is incorporated to greatly reduce the dimension of the parameter to be estimated. To further improve the efficiency of the inversion, a locally one-dimensional (LOD) algorithm is used to solve the multidimensional water flow model at coarse scales. The proposed inverse model is applied in a series of numerical experiments to demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness under different flow boundary conditions, different levels of ratio between coarse- and fine-scale grids, different densities of observation points, and different degrees of statistic heterogeneity of soil mediums. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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21 pages, 6337 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Improved Pedotransfer Function for Soil Hydrological Properties in New Zealand

by Stephen McNeill, Linda Lilburne, Shirley Vickers, Trevor Webb and Samuel Carrick

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(10), 3997; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14103997 - 8 May 2024

Viewed by 1363

Abstract

This paper describes a new pedotransfer function (PTF) for the soil water content of New Zealand soils at seven specific tensions (0, −5, −10, −20, −40, −100, −1500 kPa) using explanatory variables derived from the S-map soil mapping system. The model produces unbiased and physically plausible estimates of the response at each tension, as well as unbiased and physically plausible estimates of the response differences that define derived properties (e.g., macroporosity and total available water content). The PTF is a development of an earlier model using approximately double the number of sites compared with the earlier study, a change in fitting methodology to a semi-parametric GAM Beta response, and the inclusion of sample depth. The results show that the new model has resulted in significant improvements for the soil water content estimates and derived quantities using standard goodness-of-fit measures, based on validation data. A comparison with an international PTF using explanatory variables compatible with variables available from S-map (EUPTF2) suggests that the model is better for prediction of soil water content using the limited information available from the S-map system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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18 pages, 2118 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Using Beerkan Procedure to Estimate Hydraulic Soil Properties under Long Term Agroecosystems Experiments

by Lorenzo Vergni, Grazia Tosi, Jennifer Bertuzzi, Giulia Rossi, Michela Farneselli, Giacomo Tosti, Francesco Tei, Alberto Agnelli and Francesca Todisco

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(9), 3817; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14093817 - 30 Apr 2024

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1085

Abstract

The BEST (Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer parameters) method was used to compare the hydraulic properties of the soils in two Long-term Agroecosystem Experiments (LTAEs) located at the FIELDLAB experimental site of the University of Perugia (central Italy). The LTAE “NewSmoca” consists of a biennial maize-durum wheat crop rotation under integrated low-input cropping systems with (i) inversion soil tillage (INT) or (ii) no-tillage (INT+) and (iii) under an organic cropping system with inversion soil tillage (ORG). ORG and INT+ involve the use of autumn-sown cover crops (before the maize cycle). Pure stand durum wheat was grown in INT and INT+, while a faba bean–wheat temporary intercropping was implemented in ORG. The LTAE “Crop Rotation” consists of different crop rotations and residue management, a continuous soft winter wheat and biennial rotations of soft winter wheat with maize or faba bean. Each rotation is combined with two modes of crop residue management: removal or burial. For INT+, despite the high-bulk density (>1.50 g/cm³), we found that conductivity, sorptivity and available water are comparable to those of INT, probably due to a more structured and efficient micropore system. ORG soils show the highest conductivity, sorptivity and available water content values, probably due to the recent spring tillage occurring in the wheat inter-row with the faba bean incorporation into the soil. For LTAE Rotation, the residue burial seems to influence the capacity-based indicators positively. However, the differences in the removal treatment are minor, and this could be due to the inversion soil tillage, which limits the progressive accumulation of organic matter. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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14 pages, 1991 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Influence of Biochar Application Rate, Particle Size, and Pyrolysis Temperature on Hydrophysical Parameters of Sandy Soil

by Justína Vitková, Peter Šurda, Ľubomír Lichner and Roman Výleta

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(8), 3472; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14083472 - 19 Apr 2024

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1797

Abstract

Sandy areas occupy a huge amount of land worldwide, but due to their characteristics, they are mostly low in fertility and low in organic matter. Sandy soils have coarse texture, high saturated hydraulic conductivity, low soil organic carbon, and poor aggregate stability and water retention capacity; therefore, it is necessary to add organic additives to them. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of particle size and application rate of biochar (BC) produced under different pyrolysis temperatures on the porosity P, available water content for plants AWC, saturated hydraulic conductivity Ks, and contact angle CA of sandy soil. The results show that an application of BC to sandy soil significantly increased AWC by 76–168%, CA by 252–489%, P by 6–11%, and significantly reduced Ks by 37–90%. Statistical analysis of the effect of three examined factors (BC application rate, particle size, and pyrolysis temperature) revealed that P, AWC, and Ks were affected by all three factors, while CA was affected only by BC application rate and particle size. The statistically significant interaction between the two factors was found for P (temperature × rate and size × rate), AWC (temperature × size), and Ks (size × rate). Statistically significant interaction among the three factors was not found for any hydrophysical parameter. The application of BC to amend sandy soils can be seen as a strategy to mitigate drought conditions and to reduce the amount of irrigation, saving water. Further investigations are needed with regard to the BC application under climate conditions with long hot and dry periods, which may promote soil water repellency. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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16 pages, 2038 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Hydraulic Characterization of Green Roof Substrates by Evaporation Experiments

by Dario Autovino, Vincenzo Alagna, Cristina Bondì and Massimo Iovino

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(4), 1617; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14041617 - 17 Feb 2024

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1138

Abstract

Green roofs can be a valid solution for stormwater management in urban environments. The objective of this study was to develop a laboratory procedure for the hydraulic characterization of artificial substrates, used in the realization of green roofs, based on transient evaporation and steady-state unit hydraulic gradient (UHG) experiments. The retention, θ(h), and hydraulic conductivity, K(h), curves of two commercial substrates Terra Mediterranea^® (TMT) and AgriTERRAM^® (ATV) and a specifically developed substrate made by mixing peat, compost and sandy loam soil (MIX) were investigated. The unimodal van Genuchten–Mualem (VGM) hydraulic functions obtained by the direct evaporation method with different choices of the fitting parameters were compared with UHG measurements of K(h) conducted close to saturation. A numerical inversion of the transient evaporation experiments performed by Hydrus-1D software was also conducted, assuming that the hydraulic properties could be expressed either by unimodal or bimodal VGM models. The results indicated that an appropriate a priori choice of the residual water content parameter improved the estimation of the water retention curve. Moreover, the water retention data estimated from the direct evaporation method were not statistically different from those obtained with the inverse Hydrus-1D. The unsaturated hydraulic conductivity estimations obtained by the direct and inverse methods were highly correlated and the use of the bimodal VGM model improved the estimation of K(h) in the wet range. The numerical inversion of laboratory evaporation data with the hydraulic characteristics expressed by the bimodal VGM model proved to be a reliable and effective procedure for hydraulic characterization of artificial substrates, thus improving the reliability of simulated water fluxes in green roofs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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14 pages, 2730 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Simple Model for Estimating the Hydraulic Conductivity of Unsaturated Soil

by Ziran Zhang and Maosheng Zhang

Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(3), 1254; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14031254 - 2 Feb 2024

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2024

Abstract

Describing the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soil is very important in predicting water transport. Most current models have complex forms and generally need to be calibrated by the measured unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curve. A simple model, by which it is possible to conveniently predict the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity, is proposed in this study. The soil–water characteristic curve and hydraulic conductivity curve are separated into three parts. The soil–water characteristic curve is represented by Fredlund and Xing’s equation. A simple model composed of three lines is proposed for estimating the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soil. The model parameters can be conveniently calibrated from the measured soil–water characteristic curve and saturated hydraulic conductivity. Finally, the proposed model is validated by the experimental data from different soils. The proposed model provides a simple approach to estimating the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soil, which is more convenient for practical application. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil Hydraulic Properties Characterization for Improving Water Availability)

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