Impact of soil texture and position of groundwater level on evaporation from the soil root zone

Abstract

The lower boundary of unsaturated soil zone is formed by groundwater level. At this level, water from unsaturated soil zone flows to groundwater and vice versa. Groundwater penetrates the unsaturated zone. By capillary rise, groundwater can supply water storage in the root zone and thus influence on actual evaporation in this soil layer. The degree to which this occurs depends on the given soil texture and the groundwater level position with regard to the position of lower root zone boundary. The paper quantifies the impact of soil texture on the involvement of groundwater in the evaporation process. The results were obtained by numerical experiment on GLOBAL model. The measurements used for model verification and numerical simulation were gained in ESL (East-Slovakian Lowland).