Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Figures Only Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Regalado, C. M. Articles by Ritter, A. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

A Soil Water Repellency Empirical Model

Instituto Canario de Investigaciones Agrarias (ICIA), Dep. Suelos y Riegos, Apdo. 60 La Laguna, 38200 Tenerife, Spain

Correspondence: ^* Corresponding author (cregalad{at}icia.es).

Received for publication 13 June 2008. The contact angle () varies nonlinearly with the soil water content (_g) in water-repellent soils; however, a quantitative description of such a _g dependence of is still lacking. Using a dimensionality reduction technique such as dynamic factor analysis (DFA), we managed to identify two common patterns within a scattered data set of vs. _g measurements performed with the molarity of an ethanol droplet test in 16 soil samples. These two common patterns, derived from the DFA, provided the basis for calibrating a proposed empirical, three-parameter, linear model that described satisfactorily (R² > 0.89) an additional –_g data set used for model validation, from 40 soil samples with organic matter contents spanning from 110 to 650 g kg^–1. This offered both scaling and a flexible quantitative description of the soil water content dependence of water repellency.

Abbreviations: AIC, Akaike's information criterion • DFA, dynamic factor analysis • DFM, dynamic factor model • MED, molarity of an ethanol droplet • WR, water repellency