The soil moisture retention curve (MRC) is time consuming and expensive to measure directly. Several attempts have been made to establish a relation between readily available soil properties, like particle‐size distribution, organic matter content, and bulk density, and the soil moisture retention curve. Those relationships are referred to as pedotransfer functions (PTFs). The objective of this study was to evaluate some PTFs with respect to their accuracy in predicting the soil moisture retention curve. Five widely used and four more recently developed PTFs were selected for evaluation. Seven of the selected PTFs predict moisture retention function parameters, whereas the other two predict the moisture content at certain matric potentials. In order to quantify the prediction accuracy, the mean of the absolute value of mean differences (MAMD), the mean and the standard deviation of the root of mean squared differences (MRMSD and SDRMSD, respectively), and the mean of the Pearson correlation coefficient (Mr) were used. The evaluated PTFs were finally ranked based on these validation indices. The PTFs showed good to poor prediction accuracy with MAMD values ranging from 0.0312 to 0.0603 m3 m−3 and with MRMSDs between 0.0412 and 0.0774 m3 m−3 The SDRMSDs and Mrs ranged from 0.0212 to 0.0349 m3 m−3, and from 0.9468 to 0.9980, respectively. The validation indices computed by the PTF of Vereecken and coworkers gave the best results. Moreover, it predicts moisture retention function parameters, and therefore, this PTF is recommended most to predict the moisture retention curve from readily available soil properties.

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The macroporosity, and to a lesser extent the microporosity, of swelling and shrinking soils is affected by their shrinkage behaviour. The magnitude of the changes in bulk volume in response to changes in water content is usually described by the soil shrinkage characteristic curve (SSCC), i.e. the relation between the void ratio and the moisture ratio. At present, many techniques have been described for determination of the SSCC. We have applied the core method, the rubber-balloon method and the paraffin-coated method on respectively undisturbed soil samples, disturbed soil samples and soil clods collected from seven horizons of a Vertisol and a Lixisol under sugar cane in the Havana province, Cuba. We demonstrated that the balloon and paraffin-coated method showed similar results, whereas the core method produced less pronounced shrinkage. The latter was due to the anisotropic shrinkage as was confirmed by the change of the geometry factor with the moisture ratio, to a possible reorientation of particles when collecting undisturbed soil cores, and to the occurrence of small cracks upon drying. We have further shown that the core method produced much higher scatter, which was explained by higher measuring errors and crumbling of the samples as they dried out. Because of its superior behaviour, the balloon method was then selected to test nine different parametric models that describe the SSCC. A group of four models which performed best in terms of RMSE, coefficient of determination and Akaike Information Criterion could be distinguished.

This study was conducted to evaluate ten closed‐form unimodal analytical expressions to describe the soil‐water retention curve, in terms of their accuracy, linearity, Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), and prediction potential. The latter was evaluated by correlating the model parameters to basic soil properties. Soil samples were taken in duplicate from 48 horizons of 24 soil series in Flanders, Belgium. All sample locations were under forest and hence the samples had, besides their difference in texture, a high variety in bulk density (ρb) and organic matter content (OM). The van Genuchten model with m as a free parameter showed the highest overall performance in terms of goodness‐of‐fit. It had the highest accuracy, the highest degree of linearity, and the lowest AIC value. However, it had a low prediction potential. Imposing the constraint m = 1 − 1/n and hence reducing the number of model parameters by one, increased the prediction potential of the model significantly, without loosing much of the model's accuracy and linearity. A high degree of accuracy and linearity was also observed for the two Kosugi models tested. Restricting the bubbling pressure to be equal to zero resulted in a rather high prediction potential, which was not the case when keeping the bubbling pressure as a free parameter. A major drawback of van Genuchten and Kosugi type models is that they do not define the soil‐water retention curve beyond the residual water content. We further demonstrated that the performance of all but one model in terms of their match to the data increased with increasing clay content and decreasing sand content, which is contradictory to the deterministic character of these models. Bulk density and OM did not have a significant effect on the accuracy of most models.

Field experiments were carried out to study the effects of different soil management practices on the water balance, precipitation use efficiency (PUE), and crop yield (i.e. winter wheat and peanut) on a loess soil near Luoyang (east edge of the Chinese Loess Plateau, Henan Province, China). Field plots were set up in 1999 including following soil management practices: subsoiling with mulch (SS), no-till with mulch (NT), reduced tillage (RT), two crops per year (i.e. winter wheat and peanut, TC), and a conventional tillage control (CT). The field plots were equipped to monitor all components of the soil-water balance except evapotranspiration, which was computed by solving the water balance equation. The results showed that although soil management had smaller influence on the magnitude of the water balance components than did precipitation variations, small influences of the applied soil management practices on water conservation during the fallow period can greatly affect winter wheat yield. SS increased consistently precipitation storage efficiency (PSE) and PUE over the 5 years compared to CT except during the wettest year. NT also had a noticeable effect on postharvest water storage during the fallow period; however, the influence on yield of NT depended on the amount of precipitation. TC lowered the winter wheat yield mainly due to the unfavorable soil moisture conditions after growing peanut in summer; however, the harvested peanut gained an extra profit for the local farmer. No matter which kind of soil management practices was adapted, PSE never exceeded 41.6%, which was primarily attributed to high evapotranspiration. From data of five consecutive agricultural years between 2000 and 2005, it could be concluded that SS resulted in the highest PSE, PUE and crop yield. TC also showed promising results considering the economic value of the second crop. NT performed slightly less as SS. CT gave intermediate results, whereas RT was the worst alternative. # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Abbreviations: CT, conventional tillage; D, drainage; ET, evapotranspiration; I, irrigation; L i , lateral inflow; L o , lateral outflow; NT, no tillage; OC, organic carbon; P, precipitation; P f , precipitation during fallow period; P g , precipitation during growing period; PSE, precipitation storage efficiency; R, runoff; RT, reduced tillage; S, water storage; S i , water storage in the beginning of the crop year; S o , water storage at the time of winter wheat sowing; S e , water storage at the end of the crop year; SS, subsoiling; TC, two-crop rotation; PUE, precipitation use efficiency

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A new parameterisation for the threshold shear velocity to initiate deflation of dry and wet particles is presented. It is based on the balance of moments acting on particles at the instant of particle motion. The model hence includes a term for the aerodynamic forces, including the drag force, the lift force and the aerodynamic moment force, and a term for the interparticle forces. The effect of gravitation is incorporated in both terms. Rather than using an implicit function for the effect of the aerodynamic forces as reported earlier in literature, a constant aerodynamic coefficient was introduced. From consideration of the van der Waals force between two particles, it was further shown that the effect of the interparticle cohesion force between two dry particles on the deflation threshold should be inversely proportional to the particle diameter squared. The interparticle force was further extended to include wet bonding forces. The latter were considered as the sum of capillary forces and adhesive forces. A model that expresses the capillary force as a function of particle diameter squared and the inverse of capillary potential was deduced from consideration of the well-known model of Fisher and the Young-Laplace equation. The adhesive force was assumed to be equal to tensile strength, and a function which is proportional to particle diameter squared and the inverse of the potential due to adhesive forces was derived. By combining the capillary force model and the adhesive force model, the interparticle force due to wet bonding was simplified and written as a function of particle diameter squared and the inverse of matric potential. The latter was loglinearly related to the gravimetric moisture content, a relationship that is valid in the low-moisture content range that is important in the light of deflation of sediment by wind. By introducing a correction to force the relationship to converge to zero moisture content at oven dryness, the matric potential-moisture content relationship contained only one unknown model parameter, viz. moisture content at -1.5 MPa. Working out the model led to a rather simple parameterisation containing only three coefficients. Two parameters were incorporated in the term that applies to dry sediment and were determined by using experimental data as reported by Iversen and White [1982. Sedimentology 29, 111-119 ]. The third parameter for the wet-sediment part of the model was determined from wind-tunnel experiments on prewetted sand and sandy loam aggregates. The model was validated using data from wind-tunnel experiments on the same but dry sediment, and on data obtained from simulations with the model of Chepil [1956. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc. 20, 288-292]. The experiments showed that soil aggregates should be treated as individual particles with a density equal to their bulk density. Furthermore, it was shown that the surface had to dry to a moisture content of about 75% of the moisture content at -1.5 MPa before deflation became sustained. The threshold shear veloci...

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