TechnicalNotesImplementationofadynamicsoilinfiltrationcapacityintheDHSVM.docVIP

Technical Notes Implementation of a dynamic soil infiltration capacity in the DHSVM Nathalie Voisin August 25, 2003 1. Previous scheme: Static maximum infiltration rate prescribed in the soil input file and considered as a calibration parameter. The disadvantage of this method is a non evolving infiltration rate after ponding occurs. The infiltration after ponding is supposed to look like an exponential decrease tending to Ks. This method has no high infiltration at any time; the exponential decrease is replaced by a uniform value that is the Maximum Infiltration Rate. This method underestimates the infiltration and overestimates runoff during large storms. Actually, ponding is even not considered as there is no condition relative to Ks, the method considered only the minimum of either the Maximum Infiltration or the Surface Water resulting from rainfall, snowmelt and runoff: Infiltration = (1-Impervious_Area)*(1-Percolation)*Min(Amount of water reaching the soil1; Dt * Max_Infiltration_Rate) 1: that is not canopy intercepted rainfall, plus runoff from previous grid cell at last time step and snowmelt. Comment: Calibration for the static infiltration was also tricky, as one had to pay attention to set up a maximum infiltration rate slightly larger than the saturated hydraulic conductivity. Current calibration had Ks = 0.01 m/s and Fcmax = 3.5e-5 m/s. Also, if Fcmax was the right order of magnitude, Ks was not. Ks has been changed to 2.8e-5 m/s for sandy loam in my next runs. Last update: 10-5 m/s might be too small for Ks, this could be increased to 10-3 for example. Laura said that 10-5 m/s is the effective Ks ( which is exactly what I took from the literature) and results from laboratory experiments. The “real” Ks is expected to be larger. 2. New scheme: dynamic infiltration capacity or infiltrability. As referred in Chow et al (1978), several methods to compute the infiltration exist: the Horton’s equation solving for the rate of moisture diffusion at the soil