New generation of hydraulic pedotransfer functions for Europe

Abstract

A range of continental-scale soil datasets exists in Europe with different spatial representation and based on different principles. We developed comprehensive pedotransfer functions (PTFs) for applications principally on spatial datasets with continental coverage. The PTF development included the prediction of soil water retention at various matric potentials and prediction of parameters to characterize soil moisture retention and the hydraulic conductivity curve (MRC and HCC) of European soils. We developed PTFs with a hierarchical approach, determined by the input requirements. The PTFs were derived by using three statistical methods: (i) linear regression where there were quantitative input variables, (ii) a regression tree for qualitative, quantitative and mixed types of information and (iii) mean statistics of developer-defined soil groups (class PTF) when only qualitative input parameters were available. Data of the recently established European Hydropedological Data Inventory (EU-HYDI), which holds the most comprehensive geographical and thematic coverage of hydro-pedological data in Europe, were used to train and test the PTFs. The applied modelling techniques and the EU-HYDI allowed the development of hydraulic PTFs that are more reliable and applicable for a greater variety of input parameters than those previously available for Europe. Therefore the new set of PTFs offers tailored advanced tools for a wide range of applications in the continent.

Monitoring and modeling infiltration–recharge dynamics of managed aquifer recharge with desalinated seawater

“…These variations clearly demonstrate the need for calibration when using PTFs to estimate deep vadose zone hydraulic parameters (Zhang et al, 2016). In this case, the simulation with the PTFs of Tóth et al (2015) was closest to the calibrated simulation results (Fig. S1 in the Supplement).…”

“…HYDRUS-1-D was recently used to evaluate recharge in natural settings (Assefa and Woodbury, 2013;Neto et al, 2016;Turkeltaub et al, 2015). In this work HYDRUS-1-D was used to evaluate infiltration through the unsaturated zone and groundwater recharge using the 1-D Richards equation, with negligible root water uptake (sink term).…”

“…In addition, previous studies (Levi, 2015;Shapira, 2012) showed that the local sediments at the Israeli Coastal aquifer show reasonable fit (R 2 = 0.69, n = 53) between the measured (in the laboratory) and estimated saturated hydraulic conductivity calculated by ROSETTA. Nevertheless, in order to test our numerical model results obtained with ROSETTA, we also preform simulations with two different USDA texturalclass PTFs (Carsel and Parrish, 1988;Tóth et al, 2015; Tables S1 and S2 in the Supplement).…”

“…A closely related study, on MAR with reverse-osmosis wastewater was conducted at the St André MAR site in Belgium. Reported work includes flow and transport modeling (Vandenbohede et al, , 2009aVandenbohede and Van Houtte, 2012), isotope and geochemical analysis (Kloppmann et al, 2008;Vandenbohede et al, 2009b) and reactive transport modeling (Vandenbohede et al, 2013).…”

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Soil Moisture at the Catchment Scale Using Remotely-Sensed Energy Fluxes

“…θs was estimated by Joint Research Centre (JRC)/Soil Bureau using pedotransfer functions as described in Tóth et al [24]. The prediction method was used depending on the type of available input information, which were the Database of Hydraulic Properties of European Soils (HYPRES) [25], the Hungarian Detailed Soil Hydrophysical Database (MARTHA) [26] and the Soil Map of the Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace [27] datasets.…”