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Abstract

Macropores are large pores in soil created by both physical processes (e.g., swell-shrink) and biological agents (e.g., plant roots and soil fauna). Macropores have profound impacts on various critical soil ecosystem services/disservices (e.g., flood prevention, contaminant leaching). In this article, we first discuss the nature of macropores and explain why they are important. We then discuss how the “architecture” of macropore networks affects water flow, before outlining some approaches that are commonly used to model water flow through soils containing macropores. We conclude with some suggestions for future research that may prove fruitful.

Keywords

By-pass flow; Dual-permeability model; Fast flow; Film flow; Kinematic wave equation; Macropore flow; Non-equilibrium flow; Percolation theory; Preferential flow; Soil structure

Published in

Title: Encyclopedia of Soils in the Environment
Publisher: Elsevier

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Soil Science

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-822974-3.00098-7
  • ISBN: 9780128229743
  • eISBN: 9780323951333

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/142811