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SPECIAL SECTION: PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION AND UNCERTAINTY ASSESSMENT IN THE UNSATURATED ZONE

Quantifying the Pore Size Spectrum of Macropore-Type Preferential Pathways under Transient Flow

^a Dep. Soil Science, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706-1299
^b Dep. Agronomy, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN 47907
^c Sustainable Perennial Crops Lab., USDA-ARS, BARC-W, Beltsville, MD 20705-2350
^d Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab., USDA-ARS, BARC-W, Beltsville, MD 20705-2350
^e Dep. Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850
^f National Soil Tilth Lab., USDA-ARS, Ames, IA 50011
^* Corresponding author (kskung{at}wisc.edu)

Received 10 January 2006.

It is well known that there is a spectrum of pores in a soil profile. The conventional use of a single lumped value of soil hydraulic conductivity to describe a spectrum of hydraulically active pores may have unintentionally impeded the development of field-scale chemical transport theory and perhaps indirectly hindered the development of management protocols for chemical application and waste disposal. In this study, three sets of four field-scale tracer mass flux breakthrough patterns measured under transient unsaturated flow conditions were used to evaluate the validity of an indirect method to quantify equivalent pore spectra of macropore-type preferential flow pathways. Results indicated that there were distinct trends in how pore spectra of macropore-type preferential flow pathways changed when a soil profile became wetter during a precipitation event. This suggests that the indirect method has predictive value and is perhaps a better alternative to the lumped soil hydraulic conductivity approach in accurately determining the impact of macropore-type preferential flow pathways on water movement and solute transport under transient unsaturated flow conditions.

Abbreviations: PFBA, pentafluorobenzoic acid • o-TFMBA, o-trifluoromethyl benzoic acid • 2,6-DFBA, 2,6-difluorobenzoic acid

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