Experimental assessment of preferential flow paths in a field soil

Ommen, H.C. Van; Dijksma, R.; Hendrickx, Jan M. H.; Dekker, L.W.; Hulshof, J.; Heuvel, Marcel van den

doi:10.1016/0022-1694(89)90107-8

Cited by 61 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Due to its geological and hydrogeological characteristics it has been used as a research catchment since the 1960s [Wosten et al, 1985;van Ommen et al, 1989;van der Velde et al, 2009van der Velde et al, , 2010avan der Velde et al, , 2010bBrauer et al, 2011]. Data series regarding rainfall, discharge, solar radiation, temperature, chemical concentration, water levels, etc.…”

Section: Case Study: the Hupsel Brook Catchmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chloride circulation in a lowland catchment and the formulation of transport by travel time distributions

Benettin

Velde

Zee

et al. 2013

Water Resources Research

118

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

[1] Travel times are fundamental catchment descriptors that blend key information about storage, geochemistry, flow pathways and sources of water into a coherent mathematical framework. Here we analyze travel time distributions (TTDs) (and related attributes) estimated on the basis of the extensive hydrochemical information available for the Hupsel Brook lowland catchment in the Netherlands. The relevance of the work is perceived to lie in the general importance of characterizing nonstationary TTDs to capture catchment transport properties, here chloride flux concentrations at the basin outlet. The relative roles of evapotranspiration, water storage dynamics, hydrologic pathways and mass sources/sinks are discussed. Different hydrochemical models are tested and ranked, providing compelling examples of the improved process understanding achieved through coupled calibration of flow and transport processes. The ability of the model to reproduce measured flux concentrations is shown to lie mostly in the description of nonstationarities of TTDs at multiple time scales, including short-term fluctuations induced by soil moisture dynamics in the root zone and long-term seasonal dynamics. Our results prove reliable and suggest, for instance, that drastically reducing fertilization loads for one or more years would not result in significant permanent decreases in average solute concentrations in the Hupsel runoff because of the long memory shown by the system. Through comparison of field and theoretical evidence, our results highlight, unambiguously, the basic transport mechanisms operating in the catchment at hand, with a view to general applications.

show abstract

Section: Case Study: the Hupsel Brook Catchmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chloride circulation in a lowland catchment and the formulation of transport by travel time distributions

Benettin

Velde

Zee

et al. 2013

Water Resources Research

118

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Early laboratory experiments [5][6][7][8] on water infiltration studies observed the formation of fingered flows in dry layered sands under uniform water flow onto the top sand layer. Later, field studies [9][10][11][12][13] demonstrated the existence of preferential water paths in sandy soils during rainfall or irrigation. At the same time, laboratory experiments [14][15][16][17][18] further confirmed that rain water channeling is a common feature that widely exists not only in sandy soils with structure heterogeneity, but also in uniform dry sands with almost no structure defects.…”

Section: Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Physicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morphology of Rain Water Channeling in Systematically Varied Model Sandy Soils

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We visualize the formation of fingered flow in dry model sandy soils under different raining conditions using a quasi-2d experimental set-up, and systematically determine the impact of soil grain diameter and surface wetting property on water channelization phenomenon. The model sandy soils we use are random closely-packed glass beads with varied diameters and surface treatments. For hydrophilic sandy soils, our experiments show that rain water infiltrates into a shallow top layer of soil and creates a horizontal water wetting front that grows downward homogeneously until instabilities occur to form fingered flows. For hydrophobic sandy soils, in contrast, we observe that rain water ponds on the top of soil surface until the hydraulic pressure is strong enough to overcome the capillary repellency of soil and create narrow water channels that penetrate the soil packing. Varying the raindrop impinging speed has little influence on water channel formation. However, varying the rain rate causes significant changes in water infiltration depth, water channel width, and water channel separation. At a fixed raining condition, we combine the effects of grain diameter and surface hydrophobicity into a single parameter and determine its influence on water infiltration depth, water channel width, and water channel separation. We also demonstrate the efficiency of several soil water improvement methods that relate to rain water channelization phenomenon, including pre-wetting sandy soils at different level before rainfall, modifying soil surface flatness, and applying superabsorbent hydrogel particles as soil modifiers.

show abstract

“…Iodine -starch staining was proposed as an alternative method to visualize flow paths . It was successfully applied for agricultural soils (Hendrickx et al, 1988;van Ommen et al, 1989;Flury and Flühler, 1995). Stained flow patterns were either traced on transparent materials (Ghodrati and Jury, 1990) or directly recorded on photographs, which were subsequently processed by digital image analysis (Ewing and Horton, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%