by Lucas Ravellys Pyrrho de Alcântara 1, Artur Paiva Coutinho 2,*, Severino Martins dos Santos Neto 1, Ana Emília Carvalho de Gusmão da Cunha Rabelo 1 and Antonio Celso Dantas Antonino 1 .
1Department of Nuclear Energy, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife 50740-545, Brazil.
2Agreste Academic Center, Technology Center, Federal University of Pernambuco, Caruaru 55014-900, Brazil.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Water 2021, 13(13), 1877; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13131877
Submission received: 23 May 2021 / Revised: 25 June 2021 / Accepted: 27 June 2021 / Published: 5 July 2021
(This article belongs to the Section Hydrology)
Abstract
The semi-arid regions of northeastern Brazil have historically suffered from water shortage. In this context, monitoring and modeling the soil moisture’s dynamics with hydrological models in natural (Caatinga) and degraded (Pasture) regions is of fundamental importance to understand the dynamics of hydrological processes. Therefore, this work aims to evaluate the hydraulic parameters in Caatinga and Pasture areas using the Hydrus-1D inverse method. Thus, five soil hydraulic models present in Hydrus-1D were used, allowing the comparison of the single-porosity model with more complex models, which consider the dual porosity and the hysteresis of the porous medium. The hydraulic models showed better adjustments in the Caatinga area (RMSE = 0.01–0.02, R2 = 0.61–0.97) than in the Pasture area (RMSE = 0.01–0.03, R2 = 0.61–0.90). Regarding the hydraulic parameters, for all models, the Pasture showed smaller saturated hydraulic conductivity and water content values of the mobile region than the Caatinga. This fact demonstrates the negative impact of compaction and change in natural vegetation in the Brazilian semi-arid. The dual-porosity model presented the best fit to the data measured in the Pasture area. However, a single-porosity model could be considered representative of the Caatinga area. The results showed that Caatinga areas contribute to maintaining soil moisture and increasing the water storage in semi-arid regions.
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