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Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2017) | Viewed by 62277

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Hongbin Zhan

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Guest Editor

Department of Geology and Geophysics, Texas A&M University, USA
Interests: groundwater hydrology; flow and transport in geological formations
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Quanrong Wang

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Guest Editor

Laboratory of Basin Hydrology and Wetland Eco-restoration, and School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China
Interests: coupled well-aquifer flow; non-Darcian flow; non-Fickian solute transport; multi-phase flow

Dr. Zhang Wen

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Guest Editor

School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China
Interests: flow and transport in low-permeability media; non-Darcian flow in porous and fractured media and its impact on transport; numerical and analytical techniques for solving groundwater problems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Study of groundwater flow and solute transport has been advanced into new territories which are beyond conventional theories, such as Darcy’s law and Fick’s law, in recent decades. The studied media change from permeable porous and fractured ones to much less permeable ones, such as clay and shale. The studied pore sizes also change from millimetres to micro-meters or even nano-meters. The objective of this Special Issue is to report recent advances in groundwater flow and solute transport that push the knowledge boundary into new territories which include, but not limited to, flow and transport in sloping aquifer/hillslopes, coupled unsaturated and saturated flow, coupled aquifer-vertical/horizontal/slant well flow, interaction of aquifer with connected and disconnected rivers, non-Darcian flow, anomalous transport beyond the Fickian scheme, flow and transport in extremely small pore spaces such as shale and tight sandstones. Contributions focusing on innovative experimental, numerical, and analytical methods for understanding unconventional problems, such as the above-listed ones, are encouraged, and contributions addressing flow and transport at interfaces of different media and crossing multiple temporal and spatial scales are of great value.

Dr. Hongbin Zhan
Dr. Zhang Wen
Dr. Quanrong Wang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Non-Darcian flow
Non-Fickian transport
Interaction of aquifer with connected and disconnected river
Multi-temporal scale, Multi-spatial scale, Multi-phase flow
Flow and transport at the interface of different media
Flow and transport in much less permeable media
Flow and transport in micro-meter or even nano-meter scales
Coupled unsaturated and saturated flow and transport
Flow and transport in sloping aquifers/hillslopes

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Published Papers (13 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research

4 pages, 159 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Editorial of Special Issue “Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary”

by Hongbin Zhan, Quanrong Wang and Zhang Wen

Water 2019, 11(3), 457; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11030457 - 5 Mar 2019

Viewed by 2113

Abstract

The theme of this special issue is to explore the new territories beyond conventional subsurface flow and transport theories. We have selected 12 articles in this special issue and these articles cover a wide range of problems including (1) Non-Fickian chemical transport in various environments; (2) Non-Darcian flow; (3) Flow and transport in low-permeability media; (4) Vadose zone process; (5) Regional scale groundwater flow and groundwater-surface interaction; (6) Innovative numerical methods. The major contributions of these papers are summarized in this editorial. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

Research

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12 pages, 2769 KiB

Open AccessArticle

New Comparative Experiments of Different Soil Types for Farmland Water Conservation in Arid Regions

by Yiben Cheng, Yanli Li, Hongbin Zhan, Hairong Liang, Wenbin Yang, Yinming Zhao and Taojia Li

Water 2018, 10(3), 298; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10030298 - 9 Mar 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4420

Abstract

Irrigated farmland is the main food source of desert areas, and moisture is the main limiting factor of desert farmland crop productivity. Study on the influence of irrigation on desert farmland soil moisture can guide the agricultural water resource utilization and agricultural production in those regions. At present, the efficiency of irrigation water usage in Northwest China is as low as approximately 40% of the irrigated water. To understand the response of farmland soil moisture in different soil types on irrigation in the Ulan Buh Desert of Inner Mongolia of China, this experimental study takes advantage of different infiltration characteristics and hydraulic conductivities of sand, clay, and loam to determine an optimized soil combination scheme with the purpose of establishing a hydraulic barrier that reduces infiltration. This study includes three comparative experiments with each consisting of a 100 cm thick of filled sand, or clay, or loam soil underneath a 50 cm plough soil, with a total thickness of 150 cm soil profile. A new type of lysimeter is installed below the above-mentioned 150 cm soil profile to continuously measure deep soil recharge (DSR), and the ECH2O-5 soil moisture sensors are installed at different depths over the 150 cm soil profile to simultaneously monitor the soil moisture above the lysimeter. The study analyzes the characteristics of soil moisture dynamics, the irrigation-related recharge on soil moisture, and the DSR characteristics before and after irrigation, during the early sowing period from 2 April to 2 May 2017. Research results show that: (1) Irrigation significantly influences the soil moisture of 0–150 cm depths. The soil moisture increase after the irrigation follows the order from high to low when it is in the order of loam, sand, and clay. (2) Irrigation-induced soil moisture recharge occurs on all three soil combinations at 0–150 cm layers, and the order of soil moisture recharge from high to low is: clay (54.3 mm, 43.39% of the total irrigation), loam (39.83 mm, 31.83% of the total irrigation), and sand (33.47 mm, 26.75% of the total irrigation). (3) After the irrigation event, DSR below 150 cm occurs for all three soil combinations. This study reveals the characteristics of irrigation-induced soil moisture recharge and DSR, and it shows that farmland consisting of an upper 50 cm plough soil and a lower 100 cm filled clay soil can save more water resource at the study site, which is useful in agricultural control measure and water resource management in arid regions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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11 pages, 1067 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mathematical Modeling of Non-Fickian Diffusional Mass Exchange of Radioactive Contaminants in Geological Disposal Formations

by Anna Suzuki, Sergei Fomin, Vladimir Chugunov and Toshiyuki Hashida

Water 2018, 10(2), 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10020123 - 29 Jan 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3359

Abstract

Deep geological repositories for nuclear wastes consist of both engineered and natural geologic barriers to isolate the radioactive material from the human environment. Inappropriate repositories of nuclear waste would cause severe contamination to nearby aquifers. In this complex environment, mass transport of radioactive contaminants displays anomalous behaviors and often produces power-law tails in breakthrough curves due to spatial heterogeneities in fractured rocks, velocity dispersion, adsorption, and decay of contaminants, which requires more sophisticated models beyond the typical advection-dispersion equation. In this paper, accounting for the mass exchange between a fracture and a porous matrix of complex geometry, the universal equation of mass transport within a fracture is derived. This equation represents the generalization of the previously used models and accounts for anomalous mass exchange between a fracture and porous blocks through the introduction of the integral term of convolution type and fractional derivatives. This equation can be applied for the variety of processes taking place in the complex fractured porous medium, including the transport of radioactive elements. The Laplace transform method was used to obtain the solution of the fractional diffusion equation with a time-dependent source of radioactive contaminant. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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1238 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Groundwater Flow Determination Using an Interval Parameter Perturbation Method

by Guiming Dong, Juan Tian, Hongbin Zhan and Rengyang Liu

Water 2017, 9(12), 978; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9120978 - 15 Dec 2017

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4227

Abstract

Groundwater flow simulation often inevitably involves uncertainty, which has been quantified by a host of methods including stochastic methods and statistical methods. Stochastic methods and statistical methods face great difficulties in applications. One of such difficulties is that the statistical characteristics of random variables (such as mean, variance, covariance, etc.) must be firstly obtained before the stochastic methods can be applied. The dilemma is that one is often unclear about such statistical characteristics, given the limited available data. To overcome the problems met by stochastic methods, this study provides an innovative approach in which the hydrogeological parameters and sources and sinks of groundwater flow are represented by bounded but uncertain intervals of variables called interval of uncertainty variables (IUVs) and this approach is namely the interval uncertain method (IUM). IUM requires only the maximum and minimum values of the variable. By utilizing the natural interval expansion, an interval-based parametric groundwater flow equation is established, and the solution of that equation can be found. Using a hypothetical steady-state flow case as an example, one can see that when the rate of change is less than 0.2, the relative error of this method is generally limited to less than 5%; when the rate of change is less than 0.3, the relative error of this method can be kept within 10%. This research shows that the proposed method has smaller relative errors and higher computational efficiency than the Monte Carlo methods. It is possible to use this method to analyze the uncertainties of groundwater flow when it is difficult to obtain the statistical characteristics of the hydrogeological systems. The proposed method is applicable in linear groundwater flow system. Its validity in nonlinear flow systems such as variably saturated flow or unconfined flow with considerable variation of water table will be checked in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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5926 KiB

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An Integrated Approach Based on Numerical Modelling and Geophysical Survey to Map Groundwater Salinity in Fractured Coastal Aquifers

by Costantino Masciopinto, Isabella Serena Liso, Maria Clementina Caputo and Lorenzo De Carlo

Water 2017, 9(11), 875; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9110875 - 10 Nov 2017

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4993

Abstract

Aquifer over-exploitation may increase coastal seawater intrusion by reducing freshwater availability. Fractured subsurface formations commonly host important freshwater reservoirs along sea coasts. These water resources are particularly vulnerable to the contamination due to seawater infiltration occurring through rapid pathways via fractures. Modeling of density driven fluid flow in fractured aquifers is complex, as their hydrodynamics are controlled by interactions between preferential flow pathways, 3D interconnected fractures and rock-matrix porosity distribution. Moreover, physical heterogeneities produce highly localized water infiltrations that make the modeling of saltwater transport in such aquifers very challenging. The new approach described in this work provides a reliable hydrogeological model suitable to reproduce local advancements of the freshwater/saltwater wedge in coastal aquifers. The proposed model use flow simulation results to estimate water salinities in groundwater at a specific depth (1 m) below water table by means of positions of the Ghyben-Herzberg saltwater/freshwater sharp interface along the coast. Measurements of salinity in 25 boreholes (i.e., salinity profiles) have been used for the model calibration. The results provide the groundwater salinity map in freshwater/saltwater transition coastal zones of the Bari (Southern Italy) fractured aquifer. Non-invasive geophysical measurements in groundwater, particularly into vertical 2D vertical cross-sections, were carried out by using the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) in order to validate the model results. The presented integrated approach is very easy to apply and gives very realistic salinity maps in heterogeneous aquifers, without simulating density driven water flow in fractures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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776 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Analytical Model of Fickian and Non-Fickian Dispersion in Evolving-Scale Log-Conductivity Distributions

by Marilena Pannone

Water 2017, 9(10), 751; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100751 - 30 Sep 2017

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3918

Abstract

The characteristics of solute transport within log-conductivity fields represented by power-law semi-variograms are investigated by an analytical Lagrangian approach that accounts for the automatic frequency cut-off induced by the initial contaminant plume size. The transport process anomaly is critically controlled by the magnitude of the Péclet number. Interestingly enough, unlike the case of fast-decaying correlation functions (i.e., exponential or Gaussian), the presence of intensive transverse diffusion acts as an antagonist mechanism in the process of Fickian regime achievement. On the other hand, for markedly advective conditions and finite initial plume size, even the ergodic longitudinal dispersion coefficient turns out to be asymptotically constant, and the corresponding expected concentration distribution can therefore be obtained by conventional mathematical methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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1465 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Calculation of Steady-State Evaporation for an Arbitrary Matric Potential at Bare Ground Surface

by Xin Liu and Hongbin Zhan

Water 2017, 9(10), 729; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100729 - 22 Sep 2017

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 6775

Abstract

Evaporation from soil columns in the presence of a water table is a long lasting subject that has received great attention for many decades. Available analytical studies on the subject often involve an assumption that the potential evaporation rate is much less than the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the soil. In this study, we develop a new semi-analytical method to estimate the evaporation rate for an arbitrary matric potential head at bare soil surface without assuming that the potential evaporation rate is much less than the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the soil. The results show that the evaporation rates calculated by the new solutions fit well with the HYDRUS-1D simulation. The new solutions also can reproduce the results of potential evaporation rate calculated from previous equations under the special condition of an infinite matric potential head at bare soil surface. The developed new solutions expand our present knowledge of evaporation estimation at bare ground surface to more general field conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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9690 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A New Approach to Quantify Shallow Water Hydrologic Exchanges in a Large Regulated River Reach

by Tian Zhou, Maoyi Huang, Jie Bao, Zhangshuan Hou, Evan Arntzen, Robert Mackley, Alex Crump, Amy E. Goldman, Xuehang Song, Yi Xu and John Zachara

Water 2017, 9(9), 703; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9090703 - 15 Sep 2017

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5629

Abstract

Hydrologic exchange is a crucial component of the water cycle. The strength of the exchange directly affects the biogeochemical and ecological processes that occur in the hyporheic zone and aquifer from micro to reach scales. Hydrologic exchange fluxes (HEFs) can be quantified using many field measurement approaches, however, in a relatively large river (scale > 10³ m), these approaches are limited by site accessibility, the difficulty of performing representative sampling, and the complexity of geomorphologic features and subsurface properties. In rivers regulated by hydroelectric dams, quantifying HEF rates becomes more challenging because of frequent hydropeaking events, featuring hourly to daily variations in flow and river stages created by dam operations. In this study, we developed and validated a new approach based on field measurements to estimate shallow water HEF rates across the river bed along the shoreline of the Columbia River, USA. Vertical thermal profiles measured by self-recording thermistors were combined with time series of hydraulic gradients derived from river stages and inland water levels to estimate the HEF rates. The results suggest that the HEF rates had high spatial and temporal heterogeneities over the riverbed, with predicted flux rates varied from +1 × 10⁻⁶ m s⁻¹ to −1.5 × 10⁻⁶ m s⁻¹ under different flow conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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6962 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Laboratory Investigation of the Effect of Slenderness Effect on the Non-Darcy Groundwater Flow Characteristics in Bimsoils

by Yu Wang, Changhong Li, Xiaoming Wei and Zhiqiang Hou

Water 2017, 9(9), 676; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9090676 - 7 Sep 2017

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4056

Abstract

A series of experimental flow tests for artificial block-in-matrix-soils (bimsoils) samples with various slenderness ratios were performed to study the Non-Darcy groundwater flow characteristics. The variations of seepage velocity, permeability coefficient, critical sample height, and non-Darcy flow factor for samples against slenderness ratios were investigated. A servo-controlled flow testing system that was developed by the authors was adopted to conduct the flow test. Cylindrical bimsoil samples (50 mm diameter and various heights) with staggered rock block percentages (RBPs) (30, 40, 50, and 60%, by mass) were prepared by compaction tests to roughly insure the same porosity of the soil matrix. The testing results show that flow the distance has a strong influence on the flow characteristics of bimsoil, and the relationship between the permeability coefficient and slenderness ratio is proposed. In addition, the critical sample height to eliminate the slenderness effect was determined, and the relationship between the critical sample height and RBP was established. Moreover, the responses of non-Darcy flow were studied by using an index of non-Darcy βfactor, which reveals the internal mechanism of the effect of flow distance on groundwater flow characteristics. The research results can be useful to the prediction of flow piping disaster for geological body made up of bimsoils. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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5653 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Effect of Roughness on Conservative Solute Transport through Synthetic Rough Single Fractures

by Zhou Chen, Hongbin Zhan, Guiqing Zhao, Yong Huang and Yefei Tan

Water 2017, 9(9), 656; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9090656 - 1 Sep 2017

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4092

Abstract

Understanding solute transport in fractured rocks is of particular importance in many applications. Aperture values ranging from 4.7 to 8.7 mm and Reynolds number (R_e) values at 9.38~1743.8 were set for investigating fluid flow through synthetic horizontal single smooth and rough fractures. The Brilliant Blue FCF dye was chosen as the tracer to visualize the transport process. This paper focuses on the dispersion process in rough single fractures under non-Darcian flow conditions. Non-Darcian flow existed in both smooth and rough single fractures and the average flow velocity–hydraulic gradient (V–J) relationships were best described by the Forchheimer equation. The main objectives were to check the existing flow and transport models and to study possible correlations between fitting parameters and heterogeneities. The classical advection dispersion equation (ADE) model failed to capture the long-tailing of breakthrough curves (BTCs). Instead, the continuous time random walk (CTRW) model was better at explaining BTCs in both smooth and rough fractures, especially in capturing the long-tailing feature. The non-Darcian coefficient β_c in the Forchheimer equation and the coefficient β in the CTRW model appeared to be most relevant for characterizing the heterogeneity of the rough single fractures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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2806 KiB

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Regional Groundwater Flow Assessment in a Prospective High-Level Radioactive Waste Repository of China

by Xiaoyuan Cao, Litang Hu, Jinsheng Wang and Jingrui Wang

Water 2017, 9(7), 551; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9070551 - 23 Jul 2017

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 5413

Abstract

The production of nuclear energy will result in high-level radioactive waste (HLRW), which brings potential environmental dangers. Selecting a proper disposal repository is a crucial step in the development of nuclear energy. This paper introduces firstly the hydrogeological conditions of the Beishan area in China. Next, a regional groundwater model is constructed using a multiphase flow simulator to analyze the groundwater flow pattern in the Beishan area. Model calibration shows that the simulated and observed hydraulic heads match well, and the simulated regional groundwater flow pattern is similar to the surface flow pattern from the channel network, indicating that the groundwater flow is mainly dependent on the topography. In addition, the simulated groundwater storage over the period from 2003 to 2014 is similar to the trend derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite-derived results. Last, the established model is used to evaluate the influences of the extreme climate and regional faults on the groundwater flow pattern. It shows that they do not have a significant influence on the regional groundwater flow patterns. This study will provide a preliminary reference for the regional groundwater flow assessment in the site of the HLRW in China. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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2595 KiB

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Better-Fitted Probability of Hydraulic Conductivity for a Silty Clay Site and Its Effects on Solute Transport

by Chengpeng Lu, Wei Qin, Gang Zhao, Ying Zhang and Wenpeng Wang

Water 2017, 9(7), 466; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9070466 - 27 Jun 2017

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5049

Abstract

The heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity of a subsurface medium is vital to the groundwater flow and solute transport. Probability is efficient for characterizing and quantifying the field characterization of hydraulic conductivity. Compared with sandy mediums, silty clay is paid less attention to due to its low hydraulic conductivity. For long-term solute transport and seawater intrusion, the low-permeable medium is considered as a remarkably permeable medium. This study reports on a comprehensive investigation on the hydraulic conductivity field of the Ningchegu site, located east of Tianjin City of China. Four layers recognized by 52 boreholes, plain fill, continental silty clay, mud–silt clay and marine silty clay, were deposited from the top to the bottom. The hydraulic conductivities measured via permeameter tests ranged from 2 × 10⁻⁶ m/d to 1.6 × 10⁻¹ m/d, which corresponded to the lithology of silty clay. The magnitude and the range of the hydraulic conductivity increased with the depth. Five probability distribution models were tested with the experimental probability, indicating that a Levy stable distribution was more matched than the log-normal, normal, Weibull or gamma distributions. A simple analytical model and a Monte Carlo technique were used to inspect the effect of the silty clay hydraulic conductivity field on the statistical behavior of the solute transport. The Levy stable distribution likely generates higher peak concentrations and lower peak times compared with the widely-used log-normal distribution. This consequently guides us in describing the transport of contaminations in subsurface mediums. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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577 KiB

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A Simple Model of the Variability of Soil Depths

by Fang Yu, Boris Faybishenko, Allen Hunt and Behzad Ghanbarian

Water 2017, 9(7), 460; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9070460 - 26 Jun 2017

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 6822

Abstract

Soil depth tends to vary from a few centimeters to several meters, depending on many natural and environmental factors. We hypothesize that the cumulative effect of these factors on soil depth, which is chiefly dependent on the process of biogeochemical weathering, is particularly affected by soil porewater (i.e., solute) transport and infiltration from the land surface. Taking into account evidence for a non-Gaussian distribution of rock weathering rates, we propose a simple mathematical model to describe the relationship between soil depth and infiltration flux. The model was tested using several areas in mostly semi-arid climate zones. The application of this model demonstrates the use of fundamental principles of physics to quantify the coupled effects of the five principal soil-forming factors of Dokuchaev. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport: Pushing the Hidden Boundary)

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