Abstract
Saturated soil hydraulic conductivity (SHC), is useful for land resources management. But it is difficult, time consuming, and labour intensive to measure in the field. These problems can be overcome through the use of pedotransfer functions (PTFs), which relate the SHC to readily available soil physical, chemical, and biological parameters. The existing PTFs were developed in temperate countries using homogeneous core soil samples. Thus, these PTFs are not useful for tropical soils with different properties and for layered soil profiles. In this paper, field measured SHC values are related to representative profile soil properties (RSPSPs) that are determined using horizons’ physical, chemical, and biological properties. The accuracy of the resulting PTFs from regression analysis is comparable to other findings for PTFs developed using homogeneous soil data. However, these PTFs cannot be widely useful because they have been developed using limited soil data. But the approach of using RSPSPs for predicting profile hydraulic conductivity promises to be of potential use.
Recommended Citation
Mulengera, M. (2003). Using Pedotransfer Functions to Predict Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity for Layered Soil Profiles a Case Study at the Sokoine University of Agriculture Farm, Tanzania. Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET), 26(2), 99-106. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.52339/tjet.v26i2.336
Publisher Name
University of Dar es Salaam