Soil water retention curve analysis using radial basis function network

The soil water retention curve (SWRC) shows the relationship between soil suction pressure and water content, which is one of the key hydraulic properties to study the flow and solute transports in unsaturated zone. A radial basis function network (RBFN) was developed to describe the SWRC with the observed soil suction pressure and simultaneous soil water content derived from laboratory test with the soil sampled in Yanqi Basin, Xinjiang Province, China. Comparing with some widely used empirical equations of SWRC in the research about unsaturated zone hydrological process, and the RBFN can more accurately describe soil water retention curve.