SPATIAL AND SEASONAL VARIATIONS IN HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY IN RELATION TO FOUR DETERMINATION TECHNIQUES

Various techniques available to determine saturated hydraulic conductivity involve different methodologies and analytical models in their computations. In this study, these differences are quantified in relation to the variations in Ks estimates obtained by four techniques: Double Ring Infiltrometer (RI), Rainfall Simulator (RS), Guelph Permeameter (GP) and Guelph Infiltrometer (GI). Results show that the Ks values obtained with the GI and RS have a higher mean than values obtained by the RI and GP techniques. The RI and RS yield Ks estimates exhibiting lower variability as compared to those obtained with the GP and GI techniques. This study further revealed that the variations in Ks in the spatial and temporal domains can be expected to be as substantial as those due to the techniques themselves.