Effects of hysteresis, rainfall dynamics, and temporal resolution of rainfall input data in solute transport modelling in uncropped soil. Issue 5 (3rd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Persson, Magnus; Saifadeen, Alan
• Is Part Of: Hydrological sciences journal. Volume 61:Issue 5(2016)
• Page Start: 982
• Page End: 990
• Publication Date: 2016-04-03
• Subjects: unsaturated zone -- solute transport -- HYDRUS -- hysteresis -- rainfall dynamics -- climate change; Hydrology -- Periodicals; 551.4805
• DOI: 10.1080/02626667.2014.950582
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0262-6667

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Numerical simulations were carried out using the HYDRUS 1D model for three different types of uncropped soils. Input data were observed of rainfall during a 15-year period at three sites in Sweden. Simulations were run with and without consideration of hysteresis. Three different rainfall input time steps were used: 0.5, 4, and 24 h. Solute transport was evaluated using the centre of mass (zCOM ) of breakthrough curves (BTCs) and largest depth where a pre-defined limit concentration was exceeded (zLC ). Results showed that hysteretic flow was slower as compared to the non-hysteretic case. Results also showed that zCOM generally had a positive correlation with the number of high-intensity rainfalls and that the correlations were higher for the non-hysteretic case. The results show that it is important to use a sufficiently short rainfall input time step and an accurate description of the soil hysteresis when assessing the effects of a future higher-intensive rainfall climate with longer dry periods.Editor D. Koutsoyiannis;Associate editor D. Yang