ESTIMATING VERTICAL SATURATED HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY FROM SOIL MORPHOLOGY IN ALBERTA

Vertical saturated hydraulic conductivity, as an important soil characteristic, should be part of the information displayed on soil survey maps. As rigorous measurement techniques are relatively slow and cumbersome, a rapid procedure for estimating vertical saturated hydraulic conductivity of soils using soil morphology was tested for Prairie conditions. Morphological estimates of vertical saturated hydraulic conductivity were compared to field measurements using an air entry permeameter for 36 sites representing 25 soil series. Eighty-three percent of the estimated values were within one saturated hydraulic conductivity class of the mean measured value. It was concluded that morphological observations are sufficiently accurate to allow field characterization of pedons. In Alberta, in Chernozemic areas, management procedures do not appear to modify strongly the saturated hydraulic conductivity. This in turn allows useful predictions of saturated hydraulic conductivity to be related to soil series concepts and therefore allows extrapolation to manageable tracts of land using map unit concepts. Key words: Saturated hydraulic conductivity, soil morphology, Alberta, estimating