Spatial Variation Studies of Soil Hydraulic Properties in a Part of Pavanje River Basin Using Ordinary Kriging Method

Master’s Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Engineering - System Science, course: Master of Technology in Water Resources Engineering and Management, language: English, abstract: Soil hydraulic properties estimation has always been a challenging task for hydrologists and engineers as the methods to be implemented in the estimation are laborious, time consuming and costly. The two major hydraulic properties of soil that are required the most are soil water retention parameters and hydraulic conductivity. The main objective of this study is to find out the spatial structure of both these hydraulic properties and study their variation in a part of Pavanje river basin. This study presents a methodology that can be adopted in estimation of soil hydraulic properties over an entire region by using Geostatics particularly Kriging interpolation method. Soil basic properties are estimated at 5 different depths at 20 sites. Soil retention parameters are developed using a region specific pedotransfer function. Saturated hydraulic conductivity is estimated using permeameter. Semivariograms are developed to find out the dissimilarity between the pairs of soil hydraulic properties values in a 2 dimensional surface. Surface maps of soil hydraulic properties are developed using ArcGIS® software. The accuracy of prediction of Kriging interpolation method is found out by comparing with two other interpolation methods. The surface maps prepared can be used by hydrologists, engineers and agriculturists to improve their irrigation systems design, land scape modelling and precision farming etc.