701-0535-00L Environmental Soil Physics/Vadose Zone Hydrology
Semester | Herbstsemester 2021 |
Dozierende | A. Carminati, P. U. Lehmann Grunder |
Periodizität | jährlich wiederkehrende Veranstaltung |
Lehrsprache | Englisch |
Kurzbeschreibung | The course provides theoretical and practical foundations for understanding and characterizing physical and transport properties of soils/ near-surface earth materials, and quantifying hydrological processes and fluxes of mass and energy at multiple scales. |
Lernziel | Students are able to - characterize porous media at different scales - parameterize structural, flow and transport properties of partially-saturated porous media - quantify driving forces and resulting fluxes of water, solute, and heat in soils |
Inhalt | Week 1: Introduction, soil and vadose zone, units and dimensions, definitions and basic mass-volume relationships between the solid, liquid and gaseous phases; soil water content; soil texture; particle size distributions; Week 2: Pore scale consideration, pore sizes, shapes and connectivity, coordination number, continuity and percolation, surface area, soil structure Week 3: Capillarity – capillary rise, surface tension, Young-Laplace equation; Washburn equation; numerical lab Week 4: Soil Water Potential - the energy state of soil water; total water potential and its components; properties of water (molecular, surface tension, and capillary rise); units and calculations and measurement of equilibrium soil water potential components Week 5: Soil water characteristics - definitions and measurements; parametric models, fitting and interpretation, hysteresis; demo lab Week 6: Saturated water flow in soils - laminar flow in tubes (Poiseuille's Law); Darcy's Law, conditions and states of flow; permeability and hydraulic conductivity, measurement and theoretical concepts (Kozeny-Carman) Week 7: Unsaturated water flow in soils - unsaturated hydraulic conductivity models and applications; Richards equation, approximations of Richards equation for steady state; approximate solutions to infiltration (Green-Ampt, Philip); outlook on unstable and preferential flow Week 8: Numerical solution of Richards equation – using Hydrus1D for simulation of unsaturated flow; choosing class project Week 9: Energy balance and land atmosphere interactions - radiation and energy balance; evapotranspiration, definitions and estimation; evaporation stages and characteristic length; soil thermal properties; steady state heat flow; non-steady heat flow Week 10: Root water uptake and transpiration Week 11: Solute and gas transport in soils; transport mechanisms of solutes in porous media; breakthrough curves; convection-dispersion equation; solutions for pulse and step solute application; parameter estimation; salt balance. Week 12: Summary of lectures; solution of old exam Week 13: Written semester-end exam Week 14: Short presentations of Hydrus class projects; discussion of written exam |
Literatur | Supplemental textbook (not mandatory) -Introduction to Environmental Soil Physics, by: D. Hillel |