An explicit hydrological algorithm for basic flow and transport equations and its application in agro-hydrological models for water and nitrogen dynamics

Abstract

Article Title: An explicit hydrological algorithm for basic flow and transport equations and its application in agro-hydrological models for water and nitrogen dynamics Year of publication: 2010 Link to published article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2010.08.004Publisher statement: Zhang, K. et al. (2010). An explicit hydrological algorithm for basic flow and transport equations and its application in agro-hydrological models for water and nitrogen dynamics. Agricultural Water Management, Vol. 98(1), pp. so that the calculations can be made on a layer basis. This drastically simplifies the 9 procedure of modeling water and solute transport in soil using the basic equations. 10The proposed algorithm was tested against the complex finite element (FE) numerical 11 scheme in simulating soil water and solute transport in different soils via numerical 12 experiments. The results showed that the proposed algorithm with a uniform soil layer 13 thickness of 5 cm and a small time step of 0.001d was able to achieve the identical 14 accuracy as the FE method. Tests of the proposed algorithm in simulating water and 15 nitrogen dynamics against data from a field experiment on wheat revealed that the 16 predicted results with the simple algorithm were in good agreement with the time-17 course measurements of soil water and mineral N concentration at the various depths 18 in the profile, suggesting that the proposed algorithm performed well and can be 19 reliably applied in agro-hydrological models. The simplicity and accuracy of the 20 algorithm will encourage scientists to use basic equations for soil water and solute 21 transport more in the future for improving performance of agro-hydrological models. 22 23