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Unsaturated Soil Hydraulic Conductivity in the Central Amazon: Field Evaluations

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Application of Soil Physics in Environmental Analyses

Part of the book series: Progress in Soil Science ((PROSOIL))

Abstract

Determination of hydraulic properties may be required to solve many questions in agriculture and environmental research. Hydraulic properties are spatially and temporally variable, consequently, reliable soil hydraulic characterization is complex and time-consuming. Furthermore, many hydraulic properties are better represented by functions (i.e., unsaturated hydraulic conductivity and soil water retentivity) rather than by the mean values. The variability due to the presence of macropores or soil cracks commonly found in some soil classes in the tropics can enhance the naturally high soil hydraulic variability. A tension infiltrometer is an equipment that can be used to evaluate near-saturated hydraulic conductivity and sorptivity. In structured soil, small changes in soil tension, near the saturation, lead to dramatic changes of the infiltration rates. In this chapter, firstly, a discussion about soil hydraulic parameters and methods more appropriate to evaluate them on tropical soils is provided. Specific sources of errors and procedures to avoid or alleviate them are pointed out. Secondly, unsaturated hydraulic conductivity measurements carried out using a tension infiltrometer are used to compare different land use systems in the Central Amazon. The scaling theory and the statistical techniques of piecewise continuous regression are briefly described and used to analyze the results. Tension infiltrometers show to be relatively cheap, robust and a simple field method to evaluate unsaturated hydraulic conductivity in tropical soils. Since K near saturation is highly variable, the data were better analyzed using the relative hydraulic conductivity and the scaling theory. These small values of the tension in the breakpoint that divide the fluxes dominated by gravity reflect the importance to evaluate unsaturated hydraulic onductivities near saturation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term permeability that is sometimes found as synonym for hydraulic conductivity is not correct. Permeability is an intrinsic property of soil and has the dimension L2 while hydraulic conductivity has the dimension LT−1 (Jury et al. 1991).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Soil Physics, Embrapa Soils, Rua Jardim Botânico, 1026, 22460-00, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Wenceslau Geraldes Teixeira

  2. Sustainable Agriculture Department, Rainforest Alliance, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Götz Schroth

  3. Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the Amazonas – IFAM, Campus Center of Manaus, Manaus, Brazil

    Jean Dalmo Marques

  4. Soil Physics Department, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Bernd Huwe

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  1. Wenceslau Geraldes Teixeira
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  2. Götz Schroth
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  3. Jean Dalmo Marques
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  4. Bernd Huwe
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Correspondence to Wenceslau Geraldes Teixeira .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Soil Physics, Embrapa Soils, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Wenceslau Geraldes Teixeira

  2. Soils Department, Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Seropédica, RJ, Brazil

    Marcos Bacis Ceddia

  3. Department of Hydrology, Companhia de Pesquisa de Recursos Minerais (CPRM), Geological Survey of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Marta Vasconcelos Ottoni

  4. Soil Physics, Embrapa Soils, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Guilheme Kangussu Donnagema

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Teixeira, W.G., Schroth, G., Marques, J.D., Huwe, B. (2014). Unsaturated Soil Hydraulic Conductivity in the Central Amazon: Field Evaluations. In: Teixeira, W., Ceddia, M., Ottoni, M., Donnagema, G. (eds) Application of Soil Physics in Environmental Analyses. Progress in Soil Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06013-2_13

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