SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF SURFACE INFILTRATION PROPERTIES OVER TWO FIELDS IN THE KONZA PRAIRIE

R.S. Govindaraju, J.K. Koelliker, A.P. Schwab and M.K. Banks

Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 66506, 913-532-1585


ABSTRACT

During the summer of 1994, an agricultural and a pristine site within the Konza prairie research area were identified to study the spatial structure of the surface infiltration properties. About 40 surface locations were selected for sampling over 10 m by 10 m areas at each of the two sites. The spatial locations were designed to obtain a balanced support for variogram computations. The Guelph Permeameter was used for the determination of soil properties. The infiltration properties examined were the saturated hydraulic conductivity, the matrix flux potential, sorptivity and the alpha parameter. These properties were analyzed using geostatistical tools. Even though the individual plots appeared homogeneous, the hydraulic properties (specially saturated hydraulic conductivity) exhibited very wide variability. Correlation lengths of these properties were found to be in the order of meters. The utility of such analysis in our understanding and modeling of field scale behavior of subsurface water will be investigated.

KEY WORDS

infiltration, spatial variability, geostatistics

This paper is from the Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference on Hazardous Waste Research 1995, published in hard copy and on the Web by the Great Plains/Rocky Mountain Hazardous Substance Research Center.