Differential evolution's application to estimation of soil water retention parameters

Abstract

A Differential Evolution (DE) is introduced to predict the parameters of the soil water retention curve (SWRC) and it is configured for reliability and efficiency with the Unsaturated Soil Hydraulic Property Database (UNSODA). The main investigated dataset is 235 samples from lab-drying-h-t table and the testing shows that the data resource is reliable and steady. Some specific statistical computations are designed to investigate the convergence speed and the fitness precision of DE, different measurements of hydraulic data, and parametric characteristics of textural groups. The statistical results on UNSODA show that DE has higher performance in parameter fitness and time saving than some previous optimization methods and the statistical values of soil water retention parameters (SWRP) can be directly applied in the agricultural research and practice.