Inverse estimation of soil hydraulic properties under oil palm trees

Canopies of forested and agricultural ecosystems can significantly alter rainfall patterns into separate stemflow and throughfall areas. These two areas often have also different organic matter contents and soil compaction properties, and hence also soil hydraulic properties, thus causing further differences in the local infiltration rates close to and away from trees. In this study we analyzed possible differences in the unsaturated soil hydraulic properties of the stemflow and throughfall areas below an oil palm tree. Tension disc infiltrometer experiments were carried out underneath the canopy and in the interspace area of an oil palm tree plantation at successive tensions of 5, 2, and 0 cm. Soil hydraulic properties were estimated inversely from the measured data using the HYDRUS-2D/3D software package. Four van Genuchten soil hydraulic parameters (i.e., the residual water content, θr, the shape factors α and n, and the saturated hydraulic conductivity, Ks) were optimized. Saturated water contents, θs, were fixed at their laboratory-measured values. Initial estimates of the optimized parameters were set according to Wooding's solution, which ensured rapid convergence of the inverse solution. The stemflow and throughfall regions exhibited contrasting hydraulic properties as indicated by the estimated hydraulic parameters. Values of θs, α, n and Ks for the stemflow area were all found to be higher as compared to those of the throughfall area. The inverse solution using tension disc infiltrometer data proved to be very useful for rapid characterization of hydraulic properties of soil under the oil palm trees.

[1]  Luis S. Pereira,et al.  Soil macropore dynamics affected by tillage and irrigation for a silty loam alluvial soil in southern Portugal , 2003 .

[2]  Diogenes L. Antille,et al.  Soil Displacement and Soil Bulk Density Changes as Affected by Tire Size , 2013 .

[3]  E. Fereres,et al.  Rainfall concentration under olive trees , 2002 .

[4]  A. Pressland.  Soil Moisture Redistribution as Affected by Throughfall and Stemflow in an Arid Zone Shrub Community , 1976 .

[5]  M. Taniguchi,et al.  Infiltration area of stemflow-induced water , 1990 .

[6]  Jan W. Hopmans,et al.  Optimization of Hydraulic Functions from Transient Outflow and Soil Water Pressure Data , 1993 .

[7]  J. W. Dickson,et al.  Compaction by agricultural vehicles: A review II. Compaction under tyres and other running gear , 1980 .

[8]  D. Fredlund,et al.  Equations for the soil-water characteristic curve , 1994 .

[9]  R. Wooding,et al.  Steady Infiltration from a Shallow Circular Pond , 1968 .

[10]  Karim C. Abbaspour,et al.  Uncertainty in Estimation of Soil Hydraulic Parameters by Inverse Modeling: Example Lysimeter Experiments , 1999 .

[11]  W. Liang,et al.  Heterogeneous Soil Water Dynamics around a Tree Growing on a Steep Hillslope , 2007 .

[12]  W. Emerson.  Water-retention, organic-C and soil texture , 1995 .

[13]  M. V. Genuchten,et al.  Estimating unsaturated soil hydraulic properties from multiple tension disc infiltrometer data , 1997 .

[14]  F. Leij,et al.  Estimating hydraulic conductivity of a fine-textured soil using tension infiltrometry , 2005 .

[15]  D. Boyle,et al.  Characterizing Disturbed Desert Soils Using Multiobjective Parameter Optimization , 2013 .

[16]  O. Bens,et al.  Effects of Conventional and Conservation Tillage on Soil Hydraulic Properties of a Silty-loamy Soil , 2004 .

[17]  Philippe Cattan,et al.  Spatially Distributed Water Fluxes in an Andisol under Banana Plants: Experiments and Three‐Dimensional Modeling , 2008 .

[18]  H. Kashkuli,et al.  Comparison of Two Efficient Methods for the Estimation of Field Unsaturated Hydraulic Conductivity from Disc Permeameter Measurements , 2011 .

[19]  D. Elrick,et al.  Determination of Hydraulic Conductivity Using a Tension Infiltrometer , 1991 .

[20]  R. Carsel,et al.  Developing joint probability distributions of soil water retention characteristics , 1988 .

[21]  K. Rehfeldt,et al.  Evaluation of closed-form analytical models to calculate conductivity in a fine sand , 1985 .

[22]  A. Klute,et al.  The Calibration of the Richards Flow Equation for a Draining Column by Parameter Identification1 , 1981 .

[23]  Juha Heiskanen,et al.  Water-retention characteristics and related physical properties of soil on afforested agricultural land in Finland , 2003 .

[24]  Shmuel Assouline,et al.  Modeling the Relationship between Soil Bulk Density and the Hydraulic Conductivity Function , 2006 .

[25]  I. White,et al.  Designs for disc permeameters , 1988 .

[26]  A. Warrick.  Models for disc infiltrometers , 1992 .

[27]  co-editors Jacob H. Dane and G. Clarke Topp,et al.  Methods of soil analysis. Part 4, Physical methods , 2016 .

[28]  Marcel G. Schaap,et al.  Modeling flow and transport processes at the local scale , 1999 .

[29]  W. J. Rawlsa,et al.  Effect of soil organic carbon on soil water retention , 2003 .

[30]  Mushtaque Ahmed,et al.  Simple field method for determining unsaturated hydraulic conductivity , 1991 .

[31]  J. Moody,et al.  Comparison of soil infiltration rates in burned and unburned mountainous watersheds , 2001 .

[32]  W. M. Post,et al.  Soil carbon sequestration and land‐use change: processes and potential , 2000 .

[33]  J. Šimůnek,et al.  Modelling investigation of water partitioning at a semiarid ponderosa pine hillslope , 2010 .

[34]  M. Th. van Genuchten,et al.  Estimation of Soil Hydraulic Properties from Numerical Inversion of Tension Disk Infiltrometer Data , 2006 .

[35]  S. P. Neuman.  Calibration of distributed parameter groundwater flow models viewed as a multiple‐objective decision process under uncertainty , 1973 .

[36]  K. Abbaspour,et al.  Hydraulic and transport properties of the plant–soil system estimated by inverse modelling , 2003 .

[37]  K. Schwärzel,et al.  Estimation of the Unsaturated Hydraulic Conductivity of Peat Soils: Laboratory versus Field Data , 2006 .

[38]  M. Vauclin,et al.  Axisymmetric transport of water and solute underneath a disk permeameter : experiments and numerical model , 1994 .

[39]  Domingo Morales,et al.  The measurement and modelling of the variation of stemflow in a laurel forest in Tenerife, Canary Islands , 1999 .

[40]  T. Tanaka,et al.  Effects of the Canopy Hydrologic Flux on Groundwater , 2011 .

[41]  Infiltration Characteristics of Tropical Soil Based on Water Retention Data , 2008 .

[42]  J. Rühlmann,et al.  A new approach to calculate the particle density of soils considering properties of the soil organic matter and the mineral matrix , 2006 .

[43]  Berman D. Hudson,et al.  Soil organic matter and available water capacity , 1994 .

[44]  Gerrit H. de Rooij,et al.  Methods of Soil Analysis. Part 4. Physical Methods , 2004 .

[45]  W. R. Gardner.  SOME STEADY‐STATE SOLUTIONS OF THE UNSATURATED MOISTURE FLOW EQUATION WITH APPLICATION TO EVAPORATION FROM A WATER TABLE , 1958 .

[46]  Marnik Vanclooster,et al.  Using inverse methods for estimating soil hydraulic properties from field data as an alternative to direct methods , 2003 .

[47]  Jack C. Parker,et al.  Development and evaluation of closed-form expressions for hysteretic soil hydraulic properties , 1987 .

[48]  W. Liang,et al.  Characteristics of stemflow for tall stewartia (Stewartia monadelpha) growing on a hillslope. , 2009 .

[49]  B. Latorre,et al.  Microflowmeter–tension disc infiltrometer: Part II – Hydraulic properties estimation from transient infiltration rate analysis , 2012 .

[50]  Ole Wendroth,et al.  Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity from transient multistep outflow and soil water pressure data , 1994 .

[51]  Miroslav Šejna,et al.  Development and Applications of the HYDRUS and STANMOD Software Packages and Related Codes , 2008 .

[52]  S. Ruy,et al.  Effect on runoff of rainfall redistribution by the impluvium-shaped canopy of banana cultivated on an Andosol with a high infiltration rate , 2009 .

[53]  B. D. Soane,et al.  The role of organic matter in soil compactibility: a review of some practical aspects. , 1990 .

[54]  Javier Tomasella,et al.  Estimating soil water retention characteristics from limited data in Brazilian Amazonia , 1998 .

[55]  W. Liang,et al.  Soil water dynamics around a tree on a hillslope with or without rainwater supplied by stemflow , 2011 .

[56]  Uri Shani,et al.  Analyses of infiltration events in relation to determining soil hydraulic properties by inverse problem methodology , 1991 .

[57]  M. V. Genuchten,et al.  Estimating unsaturated soil hydraulic properties from laboratory tension disc infiltrometer experiments , 1999 .

[58]  J. Anderson,et al.  Microbial biomass and soil organic matter dynamics in oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) plantations, West Malaysia , 1998 .

[59]  J. Arvidsson.  Influence of soil texture and organic matter content on bulk density, air content, compression index and crop yield in field and laboratory compression experiments , 1998 .

[60]  R. Horn,et al.  EFFECT OF BULK DENSITY ON HYDRAULIC PROPERTIES OF HOMOGENIZED AND STRUCTURED SOILS , 2008 .

[61]  Budiman Minasny,et al.  Estimating soil hydraulic properties and their uncertainty : the use of stochastic simulation in the inverse modelling of the evaporation method , 2005 .

[62]  M. Taniguchi,et al.  Significance of stemflow in groundwater recharge. 2: A cylindrical infiltration model for evaluating the stemflow contribution to groundwater recharge , 1996 .

[63]  S. Evett,et al.  Soil hydraulic properties of cropland compared with reestablished and native grassland , 2003 .

[64]  Brent Clothier,et al.  Combining laboratory and field measurements to define the hydraulic properties of soil , 1990 .

[65]  W. Loiskandl,et al.  Temporal dynamics of soil hydraulic properties and the water-conducting porosity under different tillage , 2011 .

[66]  W. Rawls,et al.  Soil Water Characteristic Estimates by Texture and Organic Matter for Hydrologic Solutions , 2006 .

[67]  A. Franzluebbers.  Water infiltration and soil structure related to organic matter and its stratification with depth , 2002 .

[68]  J. H. Dane,et al.  In-Situ Determination of Soil Hydraulic Properties during Drainage1 , 1983 .

[69]  J. Šimůnek,et al.  Uniqueness of Soil Hydraulic Parameters Determined by a Combined Wooding Inverse Approach , 2007 .

[70]  J. Feyen,et al.  Inverse estimation of soil hydraulic and solute transport parameters from transient field experiments: Heterogeneous soil , 2003 .

[71]  Van Genuchten,et al.  A closed-form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils , 1980 .

[72]  M. T. van Genuchten,et al.  Estimating Unsaturated Soil Hydraulic Properties from Tension Disc Infiltrometer Data by Numerical Inversion , 1996 .