Preliminary investigation to estimate soil NAPL retention using parametric pedotransfer functions

Abstract

A b s t r a c t. Organic liquid retention of soils is a primary input variable for modelling the nonaqueous phase liquid transport and behaviour in the subsurface. In environmental and soil physical practice, it is mainly determined by scaling based on the water retention of soils or with charts of average empirical values of organic liquid retention or the fitting parameters of hydraulic functions. Predicting the fitting parameters of organic liquid retention curves with pedotransfer functions might be a promising alternative method, but this topic has only been researched to a limited extent. Thus we investigated the applicability of different hydraulic functions (3-and 4-parameter form of the van Genuchten equation and Brutsaert equation) for fitting organic liquid retention characteristics. Multivariate linear regression was used to build and develop pedotransfer functions, modelling relations between original and transformed values of basic soil properties and organic liquid retention. We attempted to generate parametric pedotransfer functions. According to our results, the applicability of hydraulic functions for fitting nonaqueous phase liquid retention curves to the experimental data was proven. The investigations gave promising results for the possibility to estimate soil nonaqueous phase liquid retention with parametric pedotransfer functions.