Ruslan Wirosoedarmo, S.H. Alexander Tunggul, N. Deby Prawira
The increase of food demand must be followed by increased agriculture production. A form of this food increase is using dry land agriculture. Dry land is widely available in Indonesia but it lacks good soil water storage characteristics. Therefore, a research is conducted to understand the ability of soil to store water. The objective of research are to develop mathematic model of unsaturated soil vertical water flow in the soil media through various textures and to learn the ability of many soils in storing the water after a wetting phase. Research method is experiment to construct the mathematic model which is then compared with data of experiment result. The observed parameter is water content in the soil which is examined during drying process. The drying process is providing the water into sandy loam texture soil. Water is allowed to freely drain. The observation then involves sampling the water content for 84 hours or 3.5 days, precisely once every 12 hours. Result of the analysis over sandy loam showed that the composition of this loam is 9% clay, 80% sand, 11% silt, 27% field capacity, 8.68% permanent wilting point, 18.6 water availability, 1.24 gmcm-3 soil content weight, and 2.69% organic matter. The hard textured soils are not able to store water in the longer term, while the soft textured soils are able to store water for a longer term. © 2015, International Association for Environmental Hydrology. All rights reserved.
Department of Agricultural Engineering, Brawijaya University, Malang, Indonesia
