Numerical Simulation of Infiltration in Soil of Australian Arid Land

Abstract

It is considered that large-scale afforestation in arid and semi-arid land is one of the most promising countermeasures for fixation of carbon dioxide, which is mainly responsible for the global warming problem. Afforestation of arid land is hindered by water shortages, and requires more effective utilization of limited rainwater. The concept of this study is to evaluate the various countermeasures for constructing water balance system, from different viewpoints of conventional element-technologyoriented measures. In this study, Leonora in Western Australia was selected as a research area, and the infiltration process in the area was analyzed by two kinds of simulation models. Their validity was tested by comparing with the experimental results using glass beads with simple characteristics.
It was clearly demonstrated that each model has its own problems. Then we evaluated the infiltration rate of precipitated water into Australian specific soil by the model which showed better approximation results to the experiments with glass beads. As a result, it is suggested that the poor permeability of the soil limits plant growth in the Australian specific area.