A National Science Foundation Earthquake Engineering Research Center:
 
 Mid-America Earthquake Center Seminar Series

Headquartered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  

 
 

Hydropedology: New Solution to an Old Problem

Rabi H. Mohtar
Professor, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Perdue University
 

The soil dynamics literature has described soil hydraulic properties independently from the hydrostructural dynamics of the soilwater medium. This has led to an empirical approach for representing and estimating soil hydrostructural properties such as shrinkage, water potential, soil available water, hydraulic conductivity, etc. This disconnection between soil behavior and soil structure has limited our progress in scaling hydrologic processes and transferring information across scales.
 
 

 

We will present a new paradigm in characterizing and modeling the soil water medium and flow processes. The basic concept of Representative Elementary Volume (REV) in soil physics and hydrology will be extended into the concept of Representative Structural Volume (RSV) that takes into account the hierarchical organization of the structured soil medium. Considering the nested RSVs that represent the nested functional units of the soil, allows for establishing physically based equations and parameters of the internal functioning of the soil water medium (pedostructure) and of the external behavior of the pedon. As a result of this theory, a computer model will be presented.
 

Sponsored by the MAE Center Student Leadership Council
Tuesday, October 3, 2006: 1:00 – 2:00 CST
Grainger Library Commons Room, Urbana IL


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For questions, comments or concerns about this conference, please email surheyao@uiuc.edu