Comparison of spatial estimators for predicting water infiltration in calcareous, saline and sodic soils (Case study: Marvdasht plain)

Water infiltration to soil play an important role in irrigation management, storage moisture in soil especially in dry and semi-dry area and increasing agronomy yield. Understanding water infiltration to soil is of important in designing and applying water conservation methods, flood and runoff control and soil erosion management. Additionally, accurately measuring water infiltration to soil in different times is more important for predicting water storage in root zone, irrigation designing and planning and agronomy management. In other hand, water infiltration to soil is a base for precision agriculture, therefore, producing accurate maps for water infiltration to soil play an important role in land management and applying precision agriculture. Modeling soil water infiltration at the field scale with ruler of calcareous, saline and sodic conditions is important for a better understanding of infiltration processes in these soils and future of infiltration modeling. The present study aimed for estimating water infiltration to soil at different times using soil spatial prediction functions and spatial estimators.

in present study, 72 soil samples were collected using a random sampling method in Marvdasht plain, Fars Province. In selected points, soil bulk density, sand silt, clay, pH, electrical conductivity, calcium carbonate, solution sodium, solution calcium and magnesium and organic carbon contents. For measuring water infiltration to soil, the double ring method were used. Multiple linear regression (MLR), artificial neural network (ANN) and spatial estimators were used for deriving soil spatial prediction functions models between water infiltration to soil in different times including 5, 10, 20, 45, 90, 150, 210 and 270 min. In this study, the readily available soil properties and auxiliary variables such as remote sensing and topography data were used in soil spatial prediction functions.

The results of evaluating regression and artificial neural networks models based on the mean error (ME), coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) criteria in testing phase were showed that the developed artificial neural network models in present study performed better than multiple linear regression models in water infiltration to soil prediction at different times. Moreover, the results showed that the combined estimators (artificial neural network - Kriging) performed better than ordinary kriging model for estimating water infiltration to soil.

In totally, the results of this study showed that the applying soil spatial prediction functions (using auxiliary variables such as remote sensing data and topography data with the readily available soil properties) had a great potential to predict spatial estimation of water infiltration to soil at most considered times.