xSOIL 415 - Soil and Environmental Physics
   
 
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Printable Calendar [PDF] Printable Schedule [PDF]
 
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE - FALL 2005
 
  First to Fifth Weeks:
 08/22/05 -
09/23/05
Physical Properties of Soils and Other Porous Media - Units and dimensions, definitions and basic mass-volume relationships between the solid, liquid and gaseous phases; soil texture; Stoke's Law; particle and pore size distributions; surface area; soil structure.

Soil Water Content and its Measurement - Definitions; measurement methods - gravimetric, neutron scattering, gamma attenuation; and time domain reflectometry; the role of soil water storage in the water balance; field capacity concept.

Lab#1 (09/19/05) - Soil bulk density; particle density; soil water content - gravimetric; particle size distribution.

Soil Water Retention and Potential (Hydrostatics) - The energy state of soil water; total water potential and its components; properties of water (molecular, surface tension, and capillary rise); units and calculations of potentials under equilibrium; measuring soil water potentials; soil water characteristic (retention) curves and their measurements; fitting parametric models; hysteresis.

Lab#2 (10/03/05) - Determination of SWC curves using pressure plates, flow cells, and thermocouple psychrometer, combining measurements and fitting SWC.

Exam#1 - Tentative date: Friday 09/30/05
 
  Sixth to Tenth Weeks:
09/26/05 - 10/28/05

Water Flow in Soil: Hydrodynamics Part 1 - Laminar flow in tubes (Poiseuille's Law); Darcy's Law, conditions and states of flow; saturated flow; hydraulic conductivity and its measurement.

Lab#3 (10/17/05) - Measurement of saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) in uniform and layered soil columns.

Water Flow in Soil: Hydrodynamics Part 2 - Unsaturated steady state flow; unsaturated hydraulic conductivity models and applications; non-steady flow; approximate solutions to infiltration (Green-Ampt, Philip); field methods for estimating soil hydraulic properties.

Exam#2 - Tentative date: Friday 11/04/05

Lab#4 (10/31/05) - Infiltration experiment; application of algebraic expressions, Green-Ampt, and Philip's approximations to observed data - infiltration rates and wetting front propagation.

 
  Eleventh to Twelfth Weeks:
 10/31/05 -
11/11/05

Soil-Plant-Atmospheric Relations - Radiation and energy balance; evapotranspiration and its estimation; transpiration, crop coefficients, and irrigation scheduling; surface evaporation.
 
  Thirteenth to Seventeenth Weeks:
 11/14/05 -
12/09/05

Solute Transport in Soils and Salinity - Convection and diffusion of solutes; breakthrough curves; convection-dispersion equation and solutions to pulse and continuous solute application; salt balance and salinity management.

Lab#5 (11/14/05) - Miscible displacement and breakthrough curves for a noninteracting tracer (Chloride) through a sand column; methods of data analysis and estimation of transport parameters.

Soil Temperature and Heat Flow - Soil thermal properties; steady state heat flow; nonsteady heat flow; estimation of soil thermal properties.

Lab#6 (12/05/05) - Calibration and installation of sensors; use of dataloggers and multiplexers; assemblage of TDR probes, TDR demonstration.

Final Exam - Friday 12/16/05
 
Other Important Dates:

09/05/05
11/21/05 - 11/25/05
12/05/05 - 12/09/05
12/12/05 - 12/16/05

Labor Day - No Class
Fall Recess - No Classes
No-Examination Week
Final Exams Week