Abstract. Use of either three or six occasions to spread similar total amounts of slurry was investigated over the late winter/early spring period in two years, on plots with underdrainage. Slurry was spread on four 7 m by 25 m plots which were instrumented to allow collection of drainflow and runoff. The ‘mobile water’ pore space allowed transport of a small proportion of applied slurry through the 0.75 m soil profile. Evidence of a polluted ‘mobile water’ pulse occurred after periods of up to 48 hours following spreading, suggesting subsurface rather than overland flow. Timing of the pulse depended on whether subsequent rainfall accelerated the flow The contaminated flow persisted for 6–12 hours. The worst contamination of 39 mg/l NH4+ ‐N occurred under ‘bypass flow’ conditions, when 52 mm of rain fell during the 48 hours after a 5.2 mm application. Two contributory factors appeared important. The first was the long duration of the high intensity storm and the second was an extended period of severe frost believed to have created fissures associated with frost heave. Making several applications of slurry in amounts less than 35 m3/ha is preferable to fewer larger applications during spring, for cereals on medium to heavy soils. This recognises the likelihood of there being underdrainage on arable land and the optimal use of well‐drained, partially frozen ground to avoid compaction by slurry tankers.
Most studies of empirical estimates of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity functions do not account for water which may be relatively immobile under the conditions in which field measurements of conductivity are made. To investigate this, unsaturated hydraulic conductivity data were obtained for three monolith lysimeters, 80 cm in diameter by 135 cm deep, using the instantaneous profile technique. The lysimeters contained well‐structured, freely draining loam soil and moisture measurements were made using a neutron probe. Conductivity estimates were also obtained from laboratory measurements of soil moisture characteristics using the modified Millington and Quirk computational method. Ratios of the calculated to measured conductivities at a matching point near saturation were so large as to suggest that only a minor proportion of the soil pore space was contributing to flow through the whole profile.
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