Search results for "Soil gradation"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
Morphological characterisation of soil structure in tilled fields: from a diagnosis method to the modelling of structural changes over time
2004
Characterisation of soit structure within the tilled layer of cultivated fields is crucial because the importance of this soil characteristic on the biological, chemical and physical properties of the soil and its repercussions on water cycle, root growth and functioning. We present in this paper a method for field characterisation of soil structure. This method, practised since the 1970s, was designed for field diagnosis of the effects of cropping systems on soil structure. It is based on a stratification of the observation face of a pit dug perpendicular to the direction of tillage and traffic: spatial compartments are distinguished, according to the nature of the mechanical stresses they…
Advances in designing drip irrigation laterals
2018
It is known that using paired laterals, in which two distribution pipes extend in opposite directions from a common manifold, contribute to increasing water use efficiency (WUE). Recently, an analytical procedure to optimally design paired drip laterals on uniform slopes was proposed. More recently, this design procedure was simplified by deriving simple explicit relationships, as a function of 16 calibration constants, with relative errors that were less than 2%. In this paper, further simple design relationships are derived that require only 3 calibration constants, thus more readily obtainable results are produced and the influence of the flow rate and diameter exponents of resistance eq…
A pedotransfer function for estimating the soil erodibility factor in Sicily
2009
The soil erodibility factor, K, of the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) is a simple descriptor of the soil susceptibility to rill and interrill erosion. The original procedure for determining K needs a knowledge of soil particle size distribution (PSD), soil organic matter, OM, content, and soil structure and permeability characteristics. However, OM data are often missing and soil structure and permeability are not easily evaluated in regional analyses. The objective of this investigation was to develop a pedotransfer function (PTF) for estimating the K factor of the USLE in Sicily (south Italy) using only soil textural data. The nomograph soil erodibility factor and its associated firs…
ESTIMATING SOIL PARTICLE-SIZE DISTRIBUTION FOR SICILIAN SOILS
2009
The soil particle-size distribution (PSD) is commonly used for soil classification and for estimating soil behavior. An accurate mathematical representation of the PSD is required to estimate soil hydraulic properties and to compare texture measurements from different classification systems. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of the Haverkamp and Parlange (HP) and Fredlund et al. (F) PSD models to fit 243 measured PSDs from a wide range of 38 005_Bagarello(547)_33 18-11-2009 11:55 Pagina 38 soil textures in Sicily and to test the effect of the number of measured particle diameters on the fitting of the theoretical PSD. For each soil textural class, the best fitting perf…