On the Spatial Heterogeneity of Soil Permeability in a Mountainous Forest Area

Abstract

In the field of hillslope hydrology it is very important to understand the spatial characteristics of the soil so as to make accurate lumping representations in modeling. In order to clarify the spatial characteristics of soil permeability in mountainous slope, experiments were made on soil samples taken from the field. In the experiments, 96 undisturbed 10 cm long samples were taken from 35 locations. The spatial variations of parameters of unsaturated peamiability K=K_s(ψcr/ψ)^ηand void ratio n were examined.
Results show the coefficient of variability of Ks and η are small but large for the unsaturated characteristics ψcr and η The corelogram analysis shows the soil characteristics are independent when they taken more than 1 meter apart. Keywords: peameability, heterogeneity, mountainous forest soil, semivariogram