Application of Scaling in Estimating Soil Infiltration Characteristics

One of the methods for determination of infiltration equation parameters in border irrigation is the double rings. In this method, the parameters of the infiltration equations can be obtained by measuring the amount of infiltration at different times. Moreover, in recent years, the scale-up has been used to express the dynamics of water in the soil and reduce the required measurements. The objective of this study is to obtain the parameters of the Kostiakov-Luis infiltration equation using minimum field measurements. This research was performed using data from 15 double ring testing in different borders of the field in Zabol University. In this research to obtain the infiltration equation in each point, a reference infiltration equation with only one infiltration measuring time was used. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the method, the mean square error (RMSE) and coefficient of determination (R2) were used for estimating cumulative infiltration. The results showed that the reference curve choice was arbitrary and each of the 15 test points could be selected as the reference curve. The closeness of (R2) to one (0.99) and also low RMSE (0.001) indicate the high accuracy of the method presented in this study. Also, the scale factors obtained based on different infiltration times (0.5, 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours) are not very different. The advantage of the relationship presented in this study is requiring less input data and easier measurement as compared to other previous functions.