Combining pedotransfer functions and scaling for describing the soil hydraulic characteristics of the Kurukavak basin, Turkey

Abstract

Hydrological process modeling is used to predict the contribution from rainfall-runoff, infiltration, groundwater recharge and evaporation. For this, information related to the interception and movement of water within the soils is needed which requires accurate soil hydraulic characteristics. However, field or laboratory measurements can’t provide practical solutions for them. In this paper an indirect method, pedotransfer functions (PTFs), are searched in estimating the soil hydraulic characteristics for Kurukavak Basin. Root mean square error (RMSE) statistics is used to estimate the reliability and the accuracy of the used PTFs. Rosetta was used for prediction of hydraulic characteristics. The soil hydraulic properties obtained from Rosetta, the third level (H3). The field measurements showed good alignment with the derived retention curve using Rosetta H3 level for loamy soil. Then hydraulic properties are scaled to obtain representative values for saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) and saturated volumetric water content (?s) over the basin. However larger coefficient of variation in saturated hydraulic conductivity for sandy clay loam indicates the difference between the simple mean and the scaled mean for this soil type