Predicting unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of soil based on some basic soil properties

Soil hydraulic conductivity is a crucial parameter in modeling flow process in soils and deciding water management. In this study, by combining the non-similar media concept (NSMC) to the one-parameter model of Brooks and Corey, a new NSMC-based model for estimating unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of various soils was presented. The main inputs are soil bulk density, particle-size distribution, soil water retention characteristic and saturated hydraulic conductivity of soil. The results indicated that the NSMC-based model could generally more accurately predict unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of soils, as compared to four one-parameter models and van Genuchten–Mualem model. This study, by introducing NSMC, provided a new way to incorporate soil physical heterogeneity into soil hydraulic simulation, and hence NSMC-based approach is expected to improve efficiency of the existing models in the simulation of soil water flow.