Establishing the role of pedogenesis in changing soil hydraulic properties

Brooks, Susan; Richards, Keith

doi:10.1002/esp.3290180609

Cited by 22 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In semiarid to humid environments, soil development, in the absence of significant erosion, typically leads to progressive increases in subsurface clay content [ Birkeland , 1999]. Increased subsurface clay content with pedogenesis should lead to reduced saturated hydraulic conductivity with depth [ Brooks and Richards , 1993] and the potential for impeded vertical flow and increased shallow subsurface lateral flow. Numerous field studies have reported impeded drainage, shallow seasonal water tables, and in some instances, vernal pools in more advanced stages of soil development and associated these changes with the formation of iron hardpans [ Arkley , 1964; Gardner , 1967; Jenny et al , 1969; Jenny , 1980; Kitayama et al , 1997].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting effects of soil development on hydrological properties and flow paths

Lohse

Dietrich

2005

Water Resources Research

117

102

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Runoff pathways strongly influence hydrologic and biogeochemical losses and landscape evolution. On an evolving landscape, soil development may alter hydrologic properties and thereby change through time the relative importance of various pathways. Here we report in situ soil water retention, unsaturated and saturated hydraulic conductivity, and flow path characteristics of a 300 year old Andisol and a 4.1 million year old Oxisol, located at the extreme ends of a soil substrate age gradient across the Hawaiian Islands. The two soils contrasted in depth and texture; the young soil was shallow and coarse textured, while the old soil was deep and highly weathered with a near‐surface plinthite horizon overlying numerous clay‐rich subsurface horizons. The young soil drained freely under modest suction, whereas subsurface clay horizons at the old site required significantly more suction to start to drain than the upper horizons. Similarly, saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) was high throughout the soil profile at the young site, whereas Ks was two to three orders of magnitude lower through the subsurface clay horizons than the upper ones at the old site. Irrigation experiments with deuterium tracer demonstrated that water was downward advecting at the young site, while water at the old site moved both laterally along the subsurface clay horizon contact and slowly downward through it. Rainfall frequency distributions indicated a high probability of rainfall events exceeding subsurface Ks values in old soil. In Hawaii the addition of dust influences the time evolution of soil, but the tendency for subsoil clay accumulation in older soils leading to alteration in hydrologic flow paths has been proposed in other environments. Our findings together suggest that as soils develop with time, subsurface horizon Ks values decline, impeding rates of vertical water flow but also increasing the importance of shallow subsurface lateral flow.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting effects of soil development on hydrological properties and flow paths

Lohse

Dietrich

2005

Water Resources Research

117

102

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“…Cornelis et al ., ; Schaap et al ., ). Similarly, it is well known that the development of soil horizons exerts a first‐order control on infiltration, redistribution, and subsurface lateral flow (Mualem, ; Brooks and Richards, ; Lu and Godt, ; Zhang et al ., ). The primary contribution of the simulations presented herein is to demonstrate how these known problems are amplified in applications of coupled surface water/groundwater models, particularly when parameters estimated on core samples or experimental plots are extrapolated across entire catchments.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the importance of characterizing soil structure and horizons in parameterizing a hydrologic process model

Mirus

2015

Hydrological Processes

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Incorporating the influence of soil structure and horizons into parameterizations of distributed surface water/groundwater models remains a challenge. Often, only a single soil unit is employed, and soil‐hydraulic properties are assigned based on textural classification, without evaluating the potential impact of these simplifications. This study uses a distributed physics‐based model to assess the influence of soil horizons and structure on effective parameterization. This paper tests the viability of two established and widely used hydrogeologic methods for simulating runoff and variably saturated flow through layered soils: (1) accounting for vertical heterogeneity by combining hydrostratigraphic units with contrasting hydraulic properties into homogeneous, anisotropic units and (2) use of established pedotransfer functions based on soil texture alone to estimate water retention and conductivity, without accounting for the influence of pedon structures and hysteresis. The viability of this latter method for capturing the seasonal transition from runoff‐dominated to evapotranspiration‐dominated regimes is also tested here. For cases tested here, event‐based simulations using simplified vertical heterogeneity did not capture the state‐dependent anisotropy and complex combinations of runoff generation mechanisms resulting from permeability contrasts in layered hillslopes with complex topography. Continuous simulations using pedotransfer functions that do not account for the influence of soil structure and hysteresis generally over‐predicted runoff, leading to propagation of substantial water balance errors. Analysis suggests that identifying a dominant hydropedological unit provides the most acceptable simplification of subsurface layering and that modified pedotransfer functions with steeper soil‐water retention curves might adequately capture the influence of soil structure and hysteresis on hydrologic response in headwater catchments. Published 2015. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA

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“…Pedogenesis can increase the fine-grained material over time, decreasing the K s and increasing the WHC [48]. As shown in Figure 3A-D and curves G,H in Figure 4, the K s of S1Ss was lower than that of S1Ls, and the PSD was correspondingly finer in the S1Ss.…”

Section: Pedogenesis and Soil Water Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 92%

Effects of Climatic Change on Soil Hydraulic Properties during the Last Interglacial Period: Two Case Studies of the Southern Chinese Loess Plateau

Lin

Zhang

et al. 2020

Water

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The hydraulic properties of paleosols on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) are closely related to agricultural production and are indicative of the environmental evolution during geological and pedogenic periods. In this study, two typical intact sequences of the first paleosol layer (S1) on the southern CLP were selected, and soil hydraulic parameters together with basic physical and chemical properties were investigated to reveal the response of soil hydraulic properties to the warm and wet climate conditions. The results show that: (1) the paleoclimate in the southern CLP during the last interglacial period showed a pattern of three warm and wet sub-stages and two cool and dry sub-stages; (2) when the climate was warm and wet, the soil saturated hydraulic conductivity decreased and the content of macro-aggregates increased, and when the climate was cool and dry, the soil saturated hydraulic conductivity increased and the content of macro-aggregates decreased, indicating that the paleoclimate affected both the grain size of wind-blown sediment and pedogenic process; and (3) in the soil water characteristic curves, the soil water content showed variation in peaks and valleys, indicating that the dust source and pedogenesis of the paleosol affected the water holding capacity. The findings confirmed that on the southern CLP, the warm and wet climate improved soil aggregate stability and water holding capacity, while reducing soil water conductivity. These results reveal the response of soil hydraulic properties to the climate evolution on the southern CLP, which indicate soil water retention and soil moisture supply capacities under an ongoing global warming scenario.

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Establishing the role of pedogenesis in changing soil hydraulic properties

Cited by 22 publications

References 12 publications

Contrasting effects of soil development on hydrological properties and flow paths

Contrasting effects of soil development on hydrological properties and flow paths

Evaluating the importance of characterizing soil structure and horizons in parameterizing a hydrologic process model

Effects of Climatic Change on Soil Hydraulic Properties during the Last Interglacial Period: Two Case Studies of the Southern Chinese Loess Plateau

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