Plant Soil Environ., 2002, 48(9):407-412 | DOI: 10.17221/4388-PSE

Using of pedotransfer functions for assessment of hydrolimits

V. Štekauerová, J. Skalová, J. Šútor

¹ Institute of Hydrology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

² Faculty of Civil Engineering, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Soil hydrologic coefficients, also called hydrolimits, are soil water contents defined for certain values of water potentials. Closer attention is paid to three hydrolimits: field capacity, point of decreased availability, and wilting point. The hydrolimits can be found by various ways. Their assessment under natural conditions should be seen as laboratory assessment of hydrolimit values or use of soil water retention curves for reading of hydrolimits. Therefore, some methods for indirect assessment of the water retention curve from actually mapped soil characteristics such as soil texture, bulk density and calcium content were devised. They are generally called pedotransfer functions (PTFs). Aim of the study is to calculate values of some important hydrolimits using PTFs. The hydrolimits calculated by this way are compared to hydrolimits determined from another measured water retention curves. The presented study documents an efficiency and promptness of PTFs use for a region of interest for dynamics evaluation of water storage in the soil aeration zone considering the water supply of plants.

Keywords: water storage; hydrolimit; water retention curve; pedotransfer function

Published: September 30, 2002  Show citation