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| Titel |
Seal formation in arid soil under natural and laboratory conditions |
| VerfasserIn |
Sarah Pariente, Eyal Sachs |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250072583
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Runoff is of considerable importance in the functioning of a desert ecosystem. The hydrological characteristics of runoff developing on arid soil under natural field conditions and those of runoff occurring in laboratory-controlled rain simulation experiments using the same type of soil were investigated.
Runoff and erosion measurements were carried out in small plots (0.2-0.8 m2) on a south-facing hillslope in the northern Negev, Israel (90 mm ave. annual rainfall). Soil from the area near to the runoff plots was collected for the rain simulation experiments conducted in the laboratory. The soil was collected from 0-1 cm and 1-5 cm depths, and then placed within boxes (1.16 m long and 0.55 m wide) in the laboratory in the same order as they had been in the field. Representative surface stones were collected in the field and scattered randomly on the soil surface in the laboratory boxes. In some of the laboratory experiments soil, 5 cm in depth, was placed on a geotechnical sheet on a metal screen, while in other experiments, soil of 5 cm depth was placed on a Terzaghi filter. Rain simulator used had a rotating disk with a tilted nozzle to simulate raindrop size dispersion and kinetic energy of natural rain. The sprinkling intensity was set at a rate of 18 mm/hour.
Soil crusts in the field were more stable than those created in the lab for two standard tests: Emerson - immersion test, and the 'single water drop' test. Whereas weak activity of microphytes was found in the field there was no such activity in the lab.
The rain depth until runoff in the field was less than under laboratory conditions, while the sediment yield was greater in the field than in the laboratory (8.64 g/m2 versus 0.58 g/m2). The rain simulator experiments that had included a Terzaghi filter showed significantly higher final infiltration rate (7.5 mm/h versus 4.2 mm/h), shorter accumulated watering depth until stabilization of soil seal formation (100-200 mm versus 50 mm), and smaller fraction of clay in the crust (4.2% versus 6.8%), than the experiments that done without this filter. Therefore, it is conceivable that there is a suction of thin material from the surface while capillary pressures are activated, result in sub-surface seal formation (washed-in layer). This can lead to differences between runoff-forming processes existing in the laboratory set-up and processes that occur under natural field conditions. |
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