Experimentation and modeling of soil evaporation in underground dam in a semiarid region

Abstract

In semi-arid regions, there is a high evaporation, which leads to soil dryness, interfering in the availability of water in the soil. Usually it is difficult to measure and model the evaporation due to the complexity of the available methods, the low soil water content and the low concentration of water vapor in the air. This can also make it difficult to monitor and simulate the evapotranspiration in these regions. Thus, the Portable Chamber method is used to directly measure evaporation and evapotranspiration, because this technique allows real time estimation and in short time intervals, giving a more detailed estimation of those processes. The objective of this study was to evaluate the evaporation through the mass transfer in the soil in an underground dam under different water table depths and conditions of the semi-arid environment of Pernambuco State in Brazil, through the values predicted by the SiSPAT model and measured by the portable chamber method. For the purposing of modeling and also to better know the soil behavior, soil hydraulic properties were determined though the Beerkan method. The portable chamber method was applied for one of the first times in a semi-arid region of Northeastern Brazil, and it was consistent with the potential evaporation of bare soil, reaching about 1,800 mm per year. The SiSPAT model was quite satisfactory for simulation of soil evaporation in different conditions of the water table depth. The values found for soil evaporation with the simulation of the SiSPAT and the Portable Chamber (PC) method differed in 1.43% and 4.44% for cases where the water table was at 0.20 and 1.20m of depth, respectively.