Column-scale unsaturated hydraulic conductivity estimates in coarse-textured homogeneous and layered soils derived under steady-state evaporation from a water table

Steady-state evaporation from a water table has been extensively studied for both homogeneous and layered porous media. For layered media it is of interest to find an equivalent homogeneous medium and define "effective" hydraulic properties. In this paper a new solution for steady-state evaporation from coarse-textured porous media is presented. Based on this solution, the evaporation rate represents a macroscopic (column-scale) measure of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity at the pressure head equal to the maximum extent of the hydraulically connected region above the water table. The presented approach offers an alternative method for determination of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of homogeneous coarse-textured soils and a new solution for prediction of the effective unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of layered coarse-textured soils. The solution was evaluated with both experimental data and numerical simulations. Comparison with experimental data and numerical results for hypothetically layered soil profiles demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach for coarse-textured soils.