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.