Modelling of water flow and solute transport in soil

Abstract

The chapter presents the basic state of the art of water flow and solute transport modelling in unsaturated zone of soil. It provides a brief overview of model development and categorisation according to various criteria. The governing equations of water flow and solute transport, the time and space discretization of the computing domain, the initial and boundary conditions, the necessary input data and model outputs are presented. The chapter includes a short description of the most popular models of water and energy transport in variably saturated porous media. The challenges regarding the modelling of water flow, solute transport and marginally of other soil processes in the soil, along with references, are also mentioned.