BayCEER Workshop 2025

Do agricultural management operations and their seasonal dynamics affect soil hydraulic properties?

O 3.2 in Sustainable Use of Soil and Water Resources

09.10.2025, 14:45-15:00, H 36

In agriculture, seasonal dynamics and soil management practices are affecting the soil structure and, therefore, soil hydraulic properties (SHP), namely the water retention curve (WRC) and the hydraulic conductivity curve (HCC). It has been hypothesized that soil structure affects the wet range of the WRC and HCC, but the existing experimental data on the topic is limited, and the magnitude of this effect is not well understood. This study aims to combine laboratory methods to characterize the WRC and HCC, from saturation to oven dryness, for an agricultural field through one season.

Undisturbed soil cores were collected at four different times (mid-season, post-harvest, after seedbed preparation and a second mid-season) from the topsoil (5–10 cm depth) in a 30-year-long-term field experiment run by Bayerische Landesanstalt für Landwirtschaft. We sampled plots managed with conventional ploughing and direct seeding, all with the same loamy soil texture and crop rotation. To quantify the SHP, four laboratory methods were employed for the same soil core: the Falling Head method, the Multistep Flux method, the evaporation method and the dewpoint method.

For the direct seeding, the WRC increased the water content from mid-season to tillage, and for the second mid-season, the WRC was back to the level of the first mid-season. These dynamics were happening due to changes in pore radius around 1 μm.  For the conventional ploughing, the WRC changes shape throughout all season points; however, first mid-season and tillage were similar. The changes in the shape of the WRC mainly happen because of changes in the bigger pore with a radius of around 10 μm. For both treatments, the effect was visible all the way up to pF 3. For HHC, there were seasonal dynamics in both treatments in the pF range of 0-1.5.

Overall, this study presents experimental evidence on the effect of soil structure on SHP and its potential effect on soil water dynamics.

Keywords: Soil hydraulic properties, seasonal dynamics, agriculture, crop, soil management

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