EVALUATION OF A SENSOR BASED MECHANISM FOR SOIL INFILTRATION TESTS
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Date
2019
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COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY ANAND AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY GODHRA
Abstract
Infiltration remains one of the leading physical process during entire hydrologic cycle at varied scales all along time and space. It is an important subject of research for integrated planning & management of rainwater as well as irrigation water, to affect surface runoff, soil erosion, and groundwater recharge. All kind of hydrologic models and rainfall-runoff relations on lands are entirely governed & regulated by accuracy in its estimates. Even in a present era of advanced models/modelling, such estimates remain highly uncertain/unrealistic as they are merely based upon the point values of soil infiltration that are mostly generated by using one or other kind of infiltrometers (single ring or double ring based) with an artificial nature & magnitudes of water ponding. Owing to inherent conceptual weaknesses of ring-based tests and also other dissimilar conditions in contrast to real rainfall/irrigation-based infiltration, estimation of infiltration remains a biggest weakness. Majority of such traditional ring results remained confined and focussed to offer merely a representative estimate of some kind of steady state rates of water entry into soil for a particular test location/condition, which is ultimately taken as a closer estimation of saturated hydraulic conductance of soil. Being a prominent hydrologic loss function, the temporal & spatial distribution of infiltration always remains a key input while rainfall is partitioned into rainfall excess. Majority of researchers still states that ‘poor infiltration estimation’ is the weakest link even in present era of advanced models & modelling for hydrological or any kind of water resources developments.