Relationship between initial drainage of surface soil and average profile saturated conductivity

The evaluation was based on a theoretical analysis, using finite-element numerical solutions, for a spectrum of different-textured homogeneous soils, as well as experimental data of three US soils and an international data set containing various soils. In most cases, there was a highly significant correlation between log-log transformations of an effective profile-average saturated hydraulic conductivity (K_s) and the initial 2 d drainage of the surface soil. Spatial distributions (fractiles) of the scaling factors of the profile-average K_s estimated from the surface water content changes in 2 d, using a slope value of 2.0 to 2.5, were fair to good approximations of the measured distributions for most of the soils. -from Authors