TITLE:
Moisture, Water Holding, Drying and Wetting in Forest Soils
AUTHORS:
Pavel Blažka, Zofia Fischer
KEYWORDS:
Soil-Water Relationships, Climate Change, Water Holding Capacity
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Soil Science,
Vol.4 No.5,
May
26,
2014
ABSTRACT: Relationship of
soil and water is generally considered as important in soil science. To specify
it further we studied two different soils in 2012-2013, three additional soils
once and made several series of experiments with drying and wetting of the
soils. Principal parameters studied were the gravimetric water content (GWC),
water holding capacity (WHC), soil organic matter (SOM), their correlations and
rates of change in drying or wetting. The three parameters are significantly
inter-correlated. Distribution of GWC in the replicates of soils dried both in
nature and in experiments was narrower than that in wet soils, while WHC
changed less in drying. The correlations (GWC- WHC) became steeper (the slope
coefficient higher) and the coefficient of determination (R2) lower.
Attempts to increase WHC in wet soils with a high WHC even further were not
successful. Drying may be fast or slow; rates of increase of WHC in wetting
were all low, both in field and in the experiments, less than 0.1 g (H2O)
g-1 (soil)·day-1. None of the three parameters can be
considered as fixed characteristics of forest soils.