Submit to Water Review for Water Propose a Special Issue

Journal Browser

Soil and Water Quality: Transport through Soil

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Quality and Contamination".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2019) | Viewed by 12129

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Dr. J. E. Lopez-Periago

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

UVIGO · Faculty of Sciences, University of Vigo, Spain
Interests: soil hydrology and transport; soil physics; soil science; environmental science; hydraulic conductivity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Marcos Paradelo

E-Mail
Guest Editor

Department of Sustainable Agricultural Sciences, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, UK
Interests: soil structure and soil functions; colloid transport; soil visualization

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Soil regulates the fluxes and storage of water and nutrients and filters pollutants. This ecosystem function is crucial to mantaing the quality of our superficial and subsurface waters. Thus, understanding the transport processes of water and substances through soil is a requisite to plan land uses and protect the water resources and design remediation strategies.

The physical, chemical and biological complexity of the soil and its pore network has challenged the understanding and modelling of soil filter function. Phenomena, such as preferential flow, specific sorption or biofilm formation, that contribute to heterogeneous of water and solutes have been intensively studied. The transport of suspended colloids has been also object of study since it can enhance the movement of some strong adsorbed substances and it is the basis of the movement of viruses, bacteria and emerging pollutants such as nanoparticles towards subsurface waters.

The application of experimental techniques that allow us to describe soil complexity (i.e., non-invasive visualization techniques) and the developing of modelling strategies from pore-scale to larger scales have increased our knowledge and open new paths to reveal the soil structure controls of ecosystem functions.

The aim of this Special Issue is to encourage the submission of works mainly focused on the description of the soil structure and its implications on water, solutes and colloids transport.

The following topics are welcome:

- Description of the soil structure and porosity

- Computed tomography and other visualization techniques

- Use of tracers in transport modelling

- Preferential flow

- Percolation in disordered porous media

Dr. J. E. Lopez-Periago
Dr. Marcos Paradelo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Percolation
Preferential flow
Soil structure
Transport

Published Papers (3 papers)

Download All Papers

Research

16 pages, 5674 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Estimation of Unsaturated Hydraulic Conductivity of Granular Soils from Particle Size Parameters

by Ji-Peng Wang, Pei-Zhi Zhuang, Ji-Yuan Luan, Tai-Heng Liu, Yi-Ran Tan and Jiong Zhang

Water 2019, 11(9), 1826; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091826 - 31 Aug 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4907

Abstract

Estimation of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity could benefit many engineering or research problems such as water flow in the vadose zone, unsaturated seepage and capillary barriers for underground waste isolation. The unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of a soil is related to its saturated hydraulic conductivity value as well as its water retention behaviour. By following the first author’s previous work, the saturated hydraulic conductivity and water retention curve (WRC) of sandy soils can be estimated from their basic gradation parameters. In this paper, we further suggest the applicable range of the estimation method is for soils with

d_{10}

> 0.02 mm and

C_{u}

< 20, in which

d_{10}

is the grain diameter corresponding to 10% passing and

C_{u}

is the coefficient of uniformity (

C_{u} = d_{60} / d_{10}

). The estimation method is also modified to consider the porosity variation effect. Then the proposed method is applied to predict unsaturated hydraulic conductivity properties of different sandy soils and also compared with laboratory and field test results. The comparison shows that the newly developed estimation method, which predicts the relative permeability of unsaturated sands from basic grain size parameters and porosity, generally has a fair agreement with measured data. It also indicates that the air-entry value is mainly relative to the mean grain size and porosity value change from the intrinsic value. The rate of permeability decline with suction is mainly associated with grain size polydispersity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil and Water Quality: Transport through Soil)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 2142 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Effect of Flooding on Evaporation and the Groundwater Table for a Salt-Crusted Soil

by Xinhu Li and Fengzhi Shi

Water 2019, 11(5), 1003; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11051003 - 13 May 2019

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3845

Abstract

Soil salt crusts have been shown to have a strong influence on evaporation and water movement in soils, and this has attracted considerable attention. However, there is little information available on these processes during flooding. The objective of this study was to investigate the evaporation rate, variation in the groundwater table, and soil water content of salt-crusted soil flooded by five floodwater depths: 2 mm (Treatment A), 6 mm (Treatment B), 10 mm (Treatment C) 14 mm (Treatment D), and 18 mm (Treatment E). The experiments were carried out using repacked homogeneous silt loam soil columns in the laboratory. The experimental results showed that salt crust formation led to a low evaporation rate. The salt crust tended to form a dome, and some breakage occurred when the salt crust was dry. The broken crust increased the evaporation rate, indicating that the evaporation occurred below the crust. The soil moisture did not significantly change in the soil profile from 20 to 70 cm during the experimental period, which indicated that the existence of the evaporation front located in a layer very close to the surface. The evaporation rate rapidly increased when floodwater was added to the soils and returned to its previous low value after the salt crust reformed. However, before the salt crust reformed, there was a total water loss of 2.1, 4.3, 6.6, 10.1, and 13.8 mm for treatments A, B, C, D, and E, respectively, indicating that only a portion of the floodwater evaporated; another portion of the floodwater was discharged into the groundwater, causing the groundwater table to rise, although only by a small amount (6 mm). Therefore, the groundwater recharge caused by flooding should be considered. Otherwise, groundwater consumption may be overestimated. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil and Water Quality: Transport through Soil)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

22 pages, 2494 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effect of Stoniness on the Hydraulic Properties of a Soil from an Evaporation Experiment Using the Wind and Inverse Estimation Methods

by Nerea Arias, Iñigo Virto, Alberto Enrique, Paloma Bescansa, Riley Walton and Ole Wendroth

Water 2019, 11(3), 440; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11030440 - 28 Feb 2019

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 2920

Abstract

Stony soils are distributed all over the world. The study of their characteristics has gained importance lately due to their increasing use as agricultural soils. The effect that rock fragments exert on the soil hydraulic properties is difficult to measure in situ, and is usually derived from the fine earth properties. However, the corrections used so far do not seem accurate for all types of stony soils. Our objective was to assess the adequacy of estimating the hydraulic properties of a stony soil from the fine earth ones by correcting the latter by the volume occupied by rock fragments. To do that, we first assessed the validity of different approaches for estimating the hydraulic properties of a stone-free and a stony (40% rock fragments) cylinder prepared with samples from the same silt loam soil. The functions relating to the soil hydraulic properties (θ-h, K-h-θ) were estimated by the Wind method and by inverse estimation, using data from an evaporation experiment where the soil water content and pressure head were measured at different soil depths over time. Results from the evaporation experiment were compared to those obtained by applying the equation that corrects fine earth properties by the rock fragments volume. Wind and the Inverse Estimation methods were successfully applied to estimate soil water content and hydraulic conductivity from the stony soil experiment, except for some uncertainties caused by the limited range of suction in which the experiment was conducted. The application of an equation for adjusting the soil water content at different pressure heads (allowing for defining the soil water retention curve, SWRC), and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity (K) directly from the stone content was not satisfactory. K values obtained from the measured data were higher than those inferred by the correcting equation in the wet range, but decreased much faster with a decreasing pressure head. The use of this equation did therefore not take into account the effect that the creation of lacunar pores by the presence of rock fragments likely exerts on water flow processes. The use of such correction needs therefore to be revised and new approaches are needed for estimating the hydraulic conductivity in stony soils. In relation to SWRC, a new equation to calculate the water content of a stony soil accounting for the influence of possible lacunar pores is proposed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soil and Water Quality: Transport through Soil)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Soil and Water Quality: Transport through Soil

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Published Papers (3 papers)

Research

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI