What is infiltration?

 The movement of water through the air-soil interface

 It is one of the things that can happen to precipitation that reaches the soil surface
Processes of infiltration
• Entry through the soil surface (infiltration)
• Storage in the soil profile (soil moisture)
• Transmission through the soil profile- (percolation)
Percolation
 Once the water infiltrates into the ground, the downward movement of water through the soil
profile may begin.
 The percolating water may move as a saturated front - under the influence of gravity…
 Or, it may move as unsaturated flow mostly due to capillary forces.
 The vertical percolation of the water into various levels or zones allows for storage in the
subsurface .
 This stored subsurface water is held and released as either evaporation, transpiration, or as
streamflow eventually reaching the watershed outlet.
What factors affect infiltration?
• Flow influences
• Head (ponding)
• Viscosity (function of temperature)
• Water quality
• Soil chemistry
• Soil and water temperature
• Air entrapment
• Soil surface conditions
• Land use
• Vegetation cover
• Roughness and slope
• Cracking and crusting
• Surface sealing, swelling
• Hydrophobicity
• Dryness
• Heat
• Plant chemicals
• Aromatic oils
• Other chemicals
• Fire
• Subsurface conditions
• Soil
1. Hydrologic group
2. Texture
3. Porosity
4. Depth
5. Shrink and swell
6. Layering
7. Spatial variability
8. Structure
 • Root system
• Water table depth
• Subsurface drainage
• Water release relationship
• Hydraulic conductivity

Factors that affect surface and subsurface conditions that affect infiltration
• Mechanical processes, plowing,
• Frost- freeze-thaw cycles
• Litter layer, organic matter
• Compaction
• Antecedent soil water condition
• Chemical activity
• Biological activity
• Microbial activity
How do we measure infiltration?
Single ring infiltrometer
• Constant head (ponded depth)
• Results tend to be higher than that due to rainfall
• Point scale
Double-ring Infiltrometer
• Two rings eliminates overestimating the hydraulic conductivity
• Outer ring contributes to lateral flow , so
• Inner ring is contributing mostly to downward flow.
• Water from Mariotte bottles to rings via tap at base of bottles. Ring water height equals that of
the base of the bubble tube.
• When water moves into the soil, reducing the height of ring water to below that of the bubble
tube, more water is fed into the ring.
• Soil surveys
• Usually report infiltration ranges for various soil types
• Example rates
• Sand 124 mm/hr
• Sandy loam 50 mm/hr
• Loam 13.2 mm/hr
• Silt loam 1.05 mm/hr
• Light clay 0.44 mm/hr
• Estimating infiltration at the scale of a catchment (watershed):
1. Measure baseflow before rainfall
2. Measure rainfall
3. Measure streamflow
4. Estimate runoff by baseflow separation
5. Estimate: Infiltration = rainfall - runoff

Infiltration models
 Green & Ampt (1911)
 Horton (1930)
 Kostiakov (1932)
 Philip (1957)