Authors : Hai-Jun Zuo, Qi Zhang, Lu-Yi Ma, Heike Hartmann, Jian-Qing Zhai and Li-Gang Xu
Abstract: Soil water plays an important role in the process of formation, transformation and consumption of water resources and its quantity and existing form is closely related to the growth and development of crops. As for plants, soil water use efficiency is to a large extent constrained by soil water content and storage which are affected by many factors in different degree. Among them, soil water percolation is one of the main reasons to cause soil water loss. Previous research indicated that percolation loss is one of the most important ways of water and nutrients loss from agricultural soil. In most cases, natural rainfall and unrational irrigation easily lead to soil water percolation loss. In order to understand the response of soil water percolation to different rainfall conditions for subsequent assessment of associated nitrogen loss, a numerical model has been used to simulate the soil water percolation rates under different rainfall scenarios in this study. Results indicated that soil water percolation rate was highly correlated to the rainfall intensity. For the same total amount of rainfall in a certain time period, the total amount of soil water percolation for rainfall events of low frequency and high intensity was greater than that for rainfall events of high frequency and low intensity. On the other hand, the percolation rate was relevant to the preceding rainfall events. Multiple rainfall events in a relatively short period will result in a peak percolation rate.
Hai-Jun Zuo, Qi Zhang, Lu-Yi Ma, Heike Hartmann, Jian-Qing Zhai and Li-Gang Xu, 2010. Evaluation of Soil Water Percolation in Response to Different Rainfall Conditions using HYDRUS-1D Model in the Low Hill Red Soil Region of Jiangxi, China. Research Journal of Soil and Water Management, 1: 76-84.