• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.29
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• pp.29-35
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• 2011

The relationship between hydrologic processes and scale is one of the more complex issues in surface water hydrology. Disturbances that change vegetation and/or soil properties have been known to subsequently alter the landscape. The primary objective of this study was to estimate the grain size of soils with different properties from the hydraulic conductivity using pedotransfer functions. The double ring infiltrometer method was used to measure the vertical hydraulic conductivity of three soils under different soil planar surface treatments. Seven selected pedotransfer functions were used to estimate percentile diameters and the reduction in infiltration caused by compaction was misconstrued as caused by changes in percentile diameter. Results showed that compaction on the sandy loamy foot paths reduced the hydraulic conductivity by about 50%. The study showed that perceptual models of infiltration processes and appreciation of scale problems in modeling are far more sophisticated than normally presented in texts. Hydraulic measurement methods are still relevant and will provide significant information of grain size of the soils.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.655-661
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• 2016

Relationships between saturated conductivity (Ks) and separate contents were evaluated from 44 soil series of arable lands: 18 for paddy fields and 26 for upland crop fields. Saturated hydraulic conductivities of A, B, and C horizons were determined with tension infiltrometer and Guelph permeameter in situ. Sand, silt, clay, and organic matter content of each horizon were analyzed. Based on correlation analysis, sand separate had a positive relationship with Ks for both paddy (r=0.27, p=0.017) and upland fields (r=0.24. p=0.030). Clay content had a negative relationship with Ks for paddy soils (r=-0.32, p=0.005) while significant correlation between them was not found for upland crop fields (r=-0.20, p=0.07). Organic matter content showed a positive relationship with Ks only for upland crop fields (r=0.33, p=0.002). Due to low correlation coefficients between separate contents and Ks, performance of pedotransfer functions was not enough to estimate Ks. It implies that hydraulic properties of arable lands were affected by other factors rather than particle characteristics. Platy structure and plow pan were suggested to limit Ks of paddy fields. Soil compaction and diversity of parent materials were proposed to influence Ks of upland crop fields. It suggests that genetic processes and artificial managements should be included in pedotransfer functions to estimate hydraulic properties appropriately.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.37-45
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• 2009

Susceptibility assessment of groundwater contamination is a useful tool for many aspects of regional and local groundwater resources planning and management. It can be used to direct regulatory, monitoring, educational, and policy-making efforts to highly vulnerable areas. In this study, a semi process-based was proposed to evaluate relative susceptibilities to groundwater contamination by nitrate on a regional scale. Numerical simulation based on data from each soil series was done to model water flow within soil profiles that were related to groundwater contamination by nitrate. Relative vulnerability indices for each soil series were produced by manipulation of amount of leaching flux, amount of average water storage in a soil profile, and amount of average water storage change. These indices were designed to convey the trend of leaching flux and to maximize spatial resolution. The resulting vulnerability distribution map was used to locate highly vulnerable sites easily with an appropriate grouping the indices, and was then compared with those from groundwater nitrate concentrations monitored. An excellent agreement was obtained across nitrate concentrations from the highly vulnerable regions and those from the low to stable regions.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.428-435
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• 2015

Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) were developed for each soil horizon to estimate hydraulic characteristics of mountainous forest soils in South Korea. Twenty one dominant soil series from 8 soil catenae such as granite-originated catena and volcanic ash-originated catena were selected for the study; gravel contents of selected soils were 10% or lower. Saturated conductivity (Ks) was measured for each horizon in situ. Particle size distribution and organic matter content of each horizon were also determined. Based on correlation analysis with total data set, sand separate showed positive relationship with Ks ($r=0.24^*$) while clay separate had negative relationship with Ks ($r=-0.29^{**}$). The correlation coefficients of sand, clay, and organic matter content with Ks increased to $0.41^{**}$, $-0.67^{***}$, and $0.58^{***}$, respectively, using data from granite- or gneiss-originated catena with exception of volcanic ash-originated catena and sedimentary rock-originated catena. Determination coefficients of PTFs were 0.31 for A horizon, 0.25 for B, and 0.35 for C with all data set while those were 0.74 for A, 0.48 for B, and 0.54 for C. Organic matter was a dominant factor affecting Ks in A horizon but clay content was selected as the only factor influencing Ks in C horizon. It implies that PTFs should be developed with understanding characteristics of parent materials and horizons. Developed PTFs for granite- or gneiss-originated catena were following: A horizon: Log ($K_s{\times}10^7$) = -0.031C + 0.398OM + 3.49 B horizon: Log ($K_s{\times}10^7$) = -0.028C + 0.141OM + 4.05 C horizon: Log ($K_s{\times}10^7$) = -0.072C + 4.66 where C is clay separate (%) and OM is organic matter content ($g\;kg^{-1}$). The unit of Ks is cm $sec^{-1}$.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.25-30
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• 2017

Hydrologic soil group is one of the important factors to determine runoff potential and curve number. This study was conducted to classify the hydrologic soil groups of Korean soils by considering saturated hydraulic conductivity and depth of impermeable layer. Saturated hydraulic conductivity of Korean soils was estimated by pedotransfer functions developed in the previous studies. Most of paddy soils were classified as D type due to shallow impermeable layer and low saturated hydraulic conductivity in B soil horizon. For upland and forest, soils classified to A and D types increased compared with former classification method because underestimated permeabilities and overestimated drainages were corrected and rock horizon in shallow depth was regarded as impermeable layer. Soils in mountainous land showed the highest distribution in A type, followed by D type. More than 60 % of soils in mountain foot-slope, fan and valley, alluvial plains, and fluvio-marine deposits were classified to D type because of land use such as paddy and upland.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.944-958
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• 2011

Soil hydraulic properties such as hydraulic conductivity or water retention which are costly to measure can be indirectly generated by soil pedotransfer function (PTF) using easily obtainable soil data. The field soil structure description which is routinely recorded could also be used in PTF as an input to reduce the uncertainty. The purposes of this study were to use qualitative morphological soil structure descriptions and soil structural index into PTF and to evaluate their contribution in the prediction of soil hydraulic properties. We transformed categorical morphological descriptions of soil structure into quantitative values using categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA). This approach was tested with a large data set from the US National Pedon Characterization database with the aid of a categorical regression tree analysis. Six different PTFs were used to predict the saturated hydraulic conductivity and those results were averaged to quantify the uncertainty. Quantified morphological description was successively used in multiple linear regression approach to predict the averaged ensemble saturated conductivity. The selected stepwise regression model with only the transformed morphological variables and structural index as predictors predicted the $K_{sat}$ with $r^2$ = 0.48 (p = 0.018), indicating the feasibility of CATPCA approach. In a regression tree analysis, soil structure index and soil texture turned out to be important factors in the prediction of the hydraulic properties. Among structural descriptions size class turned out to be an important grouping parameter in the regression tree. Bulk density, clay content, W33 and structural index explained clusters selected by a two step clustering technique, implying the morphologically described soil structural features are closely related to soil physical as well as hydraulic properties. Although this study provided relatively new method which related soil structure description to soil structure index, the same approach should be tested using a datasets containing the actual measurement of hydraulic properties. More insight on the predictive power of soil structure index to estimate hydraulic properties would be achieved by considering measured the saturated hydraulic conductivity and the soil water retention.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.93-111
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• 2005

Defining soil quality in scopes and applications is one of the prerequisite for the sustainable management of soil environment to orient researches, strategies and policies. However, definition of soil quality is controversial depending upon a viewpoint of soil science or soil environment. Soil quality can be, irrespective of the disciplines, defined as the capacity of a soil to function within ecosystem boundaries to sustain biological productivity, maintain environmental quality and promote plant and animal health. Common to all of the soil quality concepts can be summarized as the capacity of soil to function effectively at present and in the future. The OECD includes soil quality as one of the agri-environment indicators. This article intends to i) summarize the current soil quality research, and ii) provide information on protocol of soil quality assessment. A framework for soil quality was divided into three steps: indicator selection as minimum data set (MDS), scoring of the selected indicators, and integration of scores into soil quality index. Korean government suggested possible physical and chemical indicators such as bulk density and organic matter for paddy and upland soils to OECD. The framework of soil quality assessment is not yet implemented in Korea. Countries such as USA, Canada and New Zealand have constructed the framework on soil quality assessment and developed a user-friendly version of soil quality assessment tools to evaluate the integrated effects of various soil management practices. The protocol provided in this review might help policymakers, scientists, and administrators improve awareness about soil quality and understand the way of soil environment management.