Soil water retention curves for the major soil types of the Kruger National Park

  • Soil water potential is crucial to plant transpiration and thus to carbon cycling and biosphere–atmosphere interactions, yet it is difficult to measure in the field. Volumetric and gravimetric water contents are easy and cheap to measure in the field, but can be a poor proxy of plant-available water. Soil water content can be transformed to water potential using soil moisture retention curves. We provide empirically derived soil moisture retention curves for seven soil types in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. Site-specific curves produced excellent estimates of soil water potential from soil water content values. Curves from soils derived from the same geological substrate were similar, potentially allowing for the use of one curve for basalt soils and another for granite soils. It is anticipated that this dataset will help hydrologists and ecophysiologists understand water dynamics, carbon cycling and biosphere–atmosphere interactions under current and changing climatic conditions in the region.

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Author:Robert Buitenwerf, Andrew Kulmatiski, Steven Ian Higgins
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-360498
DOI:https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v56i1.1228
ISSN:2071-0771
ISSN:0075-6458
Parent Title (English):Koedoe
Publisher:South African National Parks
Place of publication:Pretoria
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2014/12/05
Date of first Publication:2014/11/10
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2014/12/05
Tag:Kruger National Park; Soil water retention curve
Volume:56
Issue:1
Page Number:9
First Page:1
Last Page:9
Note:
Copyright Notice: © 2014. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS OpenJournals. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
HeBIS-PPN:367159090
Institutes:Geowissenschaften / Geographie / Geowissenschaften
Angeschlossene und kooperierende Institutionen / Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft
Dewey Decimal Classification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 55 Geowissenschaften, Geologie / 550 Geowissenschaften
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 2.0