Shwetha Prasanna
Don Bosco College of Engineering
Title: Characterization of Soil Hydraulic Properties –A Case Study on Indian soil
Biography
Biography: Shwetha Prasanna
Abstract
Knowledge of the soil hydraulic properties is very important to solve many soil and water management problems related to agriculture, ecology, and environmental issues. The most frequently used hydraulic properties are the soil water retention curve and the hydraulic conductivity function. Soil water retention curve is a key parameter in soil and water management practices for sustainable and improved agricultural production. It describes the relationship between soil-water potential and its volumetric water content, θ(h). Hydraulic conductivity is other important soil property, especially for modeling water flow and solute transport in soil, irrigation and drainage design, groundwater modeling and other agricultural as well as engineering processes. The primary objective of this study was to characterize soil hydraulic properties for the Pavanje river basin soils that lie in the coastal region of Karnataka, India. The study is mainly focused to develop and validate point and parametric PTF models based on nonlinear regression technique using the different set of predictors such as particle size distribution, bulk density, porosity and organic matter content. The point PTF models estimated retention points at -33, -100, -300, -500, -1000, and -1500 kPa matric potentials and parametric PTF models estimated van Genuchten and Brooks-Corey water retention parameters. Pedotransfer functions were developed and validated for the estimation of saturated hydraulic conductivity also. The study of hydraulic properties done in this work could be very helpful for any hydrological modeling for this particular area.