
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Konukcu, F. 
A1  - Istanbulluoglu, A. 
A1  - Kocaman, I. 
T1  - Determination of water content in drying soils: incorporating transition from liquid phase to vapour phase
JF  - Soil Research
JO  - Soil Res.
Y1  - 2004
VL  - 42
IS  - 1
SP  - 1
EP  - 8
KW  - vapour diffusivity, liquid diffusivity, salinity, phase transformation, vapour flow, liquid flow.
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1071/SR03048 
N2  - In arid and semi-arid environments, soil profiles often exhibit a liquid&#8211;vapour displacement known as evaporation front characterised by a critical matric potential (&#968;me) or water content (&#952;e) located somewhere inside the unsaturated zone above a watertable (WT). The objective of this study was to determine the &#952;e including the range of water content (&#952;) in the transition zone from liquid to vapour both theoretically and experimentally for different soil textures under saline and non-saline WTs. Characteristic shapes of water content and salt concentration profiles were the criteria to obtain &#952;e experimentally, and the &#952;&#8211;diffusivity relationship was used to compute the &#952;e and &#952; range in the transition zone. Measured &#952;e values of 0.05 and 0.12 m3/m3 under non-saline WT and 0.07 and 0.15 m3/m3 under saline WT were in agreement with the computed values of 0.05 and 0.10 m3/m3 for sandy loam and clay loam soils, respectively. The model calculates roughly the same &#952;e for saline and non-saline conditions. Besides experimental soils, &#952;e and range of &#952; in the transition zone were calculated for silty loam and coarse sand. The lighter the soil texture, the smaller is &#952;e and the steeper the transition zone. The results were further compared with those calculated by different authors. 
ER  -

