Soil hydraulic properties

All processes related to the soil, such as infiltration, percolation, and capillary rise, are determined based on soil hydraulic properties. These include field capacity, saturated water content, wilting point, permanent wilting point and saturated hydraulic conductivity. These soil properties need to be provided for the root zone and the subzone. PCRaster maps can be provided for each of these properties, which can be obtained from field measurements or through the application of pedotransfer functions. The output from pedotransfer functions is also available at global scale, for instance from the Harmonized World Soil Database. The user may also provide soil texture (sand and clay fractions), organic matter and bulk density maps. Then, the soil hydraulic properties are determined through the application of pedotransfer functions (Saxton & Rawls, 2006).

FutureWater developed a global map of soil hydraulic properties (HiHydroSoil). See also: https://www.futurewater.nl/2015/07/soil-hydraulic-properties-nl/