Kathleen M. Smits

Study of the effect of wind speed on evaporation from soil through integrated modeling of the atmospheric boundary layer and shallow subsurface.

In an effort to develop methods based on integrating the subsurface to the atmospheric boundary layer to estimate evaporation, we developed a model based on the coupling of Navier-Stokes free flow and Darcy flow in porous medium. The model was tested using experimental data to study the effect of wind speed on evaporation. The model consists of the coupled equations of mass conservation for two-phase flow in porous medium with single-phase flow in the free-flow domain under nonisothermal, nonequilibrium phase change conditions. In this model, the evaporation rate and soil surface temperature and relative humidity at the interface come directly from the integrated model output. To experimentally validate numerical results, we developed a unique test system consisting of a wind tunnel interfaced with a soil tank instrumented with a network of sensors to measure soil-water variables. Results demonstrated that, by using this coupling approach, it is possible to predict the different stages of the drying process with good accuracy. Increasing the wind speed increases the first stage evaporation rate and decreases the transition time between two evaporative stages (soil water flow to vapor diffusion controlled) at low velocity values; then, at high wind speeds the evaporation rate becomes less dependent on the wind speed. On the contrary, the impact of wind speed on second stage evaporation (diffusion-dominant stage) is not significant. We found that the thermal and solute dispersion in free-flow systems has a significant influence on drying processes from porous media and should be taken into account.

Soil Moisture and Thermal Behavior in the Vicinity of Buried Objects Affecting Remote Sensing Detection: Experimental and Modeling Investigation

Improvements in buried mine detection using remote sensing technology rest on understanding the effects on sensor response of spatial and temporal variability created by soil and environmental conditions. However, research efforts on mine detection have generally emphasized sensor development, while less effort has been made to evaluate the effects of the environmental conditions in which the mines are placed. If the processes governing moisture and temperature distribution near the ground surface can be captured, sensor development and deployment can be more realistically tailored to particular operational scenarios and technologies. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the soil environment on landmine detection by studying the influence of the thermal boundary conditions at the land-atmosphere interface and the buried objects themselves on the spatial and temporal distribution of soil moisture around shallow-buried objects. Two separate large tank experiments were performed with buried objects with different thermal properties. Experimental results were compared to results from a fully coupled heat and mass transfer numerical model. Comparison of experimental and numerical results suggests that the vapor enhancement factor used to adjust the vapor diffusive flux described based on Ficks law is not necessary under dry soil conditions. Data and simulations from this study show that the thermal signature of a buried object depends on the complex interaction among a soils water content and its thermal and hydraulic properties. Simulated thermal and saturation contrasts were generally very different for a buried landmine than for other buried objects.

Continuum‐scale investigation of evaporation from bare soil under different boundary and initial conditions: An evaluation of nonequilibrium phase change

Evaporation and condensation in bare soils govern water and energy fluxes between the land and atmosphere. Phase change between liquid water and water vapor is commonly evaluated in soil hydrology using an assumption of instantaneous phase change (i.e. chemical equilibrium). Past experimental studies have shown that finite volatilization and condensation times can be observed under certain environmental conditions, thereby questioning the validity of this assumption. A comparison between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase change modeling approaches showed that the latter is able to provide better estimates of evaporation, justifying the need for more research on this topic. Several formulations based on irreversible thermodynamics, first order reaction kinetics, or the kinetic theory of gases have been employed to describe non-equilibrium phase change at the continuum scale. In this study, results from a fully coupled non-isothermal heat and mass transfer model applying four different non-equilibrium phase change formulations were compared with experimental data generated under different initial and boundary conditions. Results from a modified Hertz-Knudsen formulation based on kinetic theory of gases, proposed herein, were consistently in best agreement in terms of preserving both magnitude and trends of experimental data under all environmental conditions analyzed. Simulation results showed that temperature dependent formulations generally better predict evaporation than formulations independent of temperature. Analysis of vapor concentrations within the porous media showed that conditions were not at equilibrium under the experimental conditions tested. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Effect of NAPL Source Morphology on Mass Transfer in the Vadose Zone

The generation of vapor-phase contaminant plumes within the vadose zone is of interest for contaminated site management. Therefore, it is important to understand vapor sources such as non-aqueous-phase liquids (NAPLs) and processes that govern their volatilization. The distribution of NAPL, gas, and water phases within a source zone is expected to influence the rate of volatilization. However, the effect of this distribution morphology on volatilization has not been thoroughly quantified. Because field quantification of NAPL volatilization is often infeasible, a controlled laboratory experiment was conducted in a two-dimensional tank (28 cm × 15.5 cm × 2.5 cm) with water-wet sandy media and an emplaced trichloroethylene (TCE) source. The source was emplaced in two configurations to represent morphologies encountered in field settings: (1) NAPL pools directly exposed to the air phase and (2) NAPLs trapped in water-saturated zones that were occluded from the air phase. Airflow was passed through the tank and effluent concentrations of TCE were quantified. Models were used to analyze results, which indicated that mass transfer from directly exposed NAPL was fast and controlled by advective-dispersive-diffusive transport in the gas phase. However, sources occluded by pore water showed strong rate limitations and slower effective mass transfer. This difference is explained by diffusional resistance within the aqueous phase. Results demonstrate that vapor generation rates from a NAPL source will be influenced by the soil water content distribution within the source. The implications of the NAPL morphology on volatilization in the context of a dynamic water table or climate are discussed.

Measurement of Thermal Conductivity Function of Unsaturated Soil Using a Transient Water Release and Imbibition Method

Thermal conductivity of unsaturated soil depends on soil water content and soil type. A transient water release and imbibition method (TRIM) is modified to include measurement of the thermal conductivity function (TCF) in conjunction with concurrent measurement of the soil water retention curve (SWRC) and hydraulic conductivity function (HCF). Two pairs of dielectric and thermal needle sensors are embedded in the soil specimen to monitor spatial and temporal variation of water content, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusivity during drying and wetting processes. Three different soils, including pure sand, silt, and clayey sand are used to examine the effectiveness and validity of the new technique. The thermal conductivity data from the modified TRIM technique accords well with other independent measurements. The results show that the modified TRIM technique provides a fast and accurate way of obtaining thermal properties of different types of soils under both drying and wetting states. The typical testing time for a soil going through a full saturation variation is less than 3 weeks. We observe that the hysteresis in thermal conductivity during a wetting and drying cycle is much less pronounced than that of the hydraulic hysteresis.

Heat and water transport in soils and across the soil‐atmosphere interface: 2. Numerical analysis

In an accompanying paper, we presented an overview of a wide variety of modeling concepts, varying in complexity, used to describe evaporation from soil. Using theoretical analyses, we explained the simplifications and parameterizations in the different approaches. In this paper, we numerically evaluate the consequences of these simplifications and parameterizations. Two sets of simulations were performed. The first set investigates lateral variations in vertical fluxes, which emerge from both homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media, and their importance to capturing evaporation behavior. When evaporation decreases from parts of the heterogeneous soil surface, lateral flow and transport processes in the free flow and in the porous medium generate feedbacks that enhance evaporation from wet surface areas. In the second set of simulations, we assume that the vertical fluxes do not vary considerably in the simulation domain and represent the system using one-dimensional models which also consider dynamic forcing of the evaporation process, for example, due to diurnal variations in net radiation. Simulated evaporation fluxes subjected to dynamic forcing differed considerably between model concepts depending on how vapor transport in the air phase and the interaction at the interface between the free flow and porous medium were represented or parameterized. However, simulated cumulative evaporation losses from initially wet soil profiles were very similar between model concepts and mainly controlled by the desorptivity, Sevap, of the porous medium, which depends mainly on the liquid flow properties of the porous medium.

Experimental and Modeling Study of Forest Fire Effect on Soil Thermal Conductivity

An understanding of soil thermal conductivity after a wildfire or controlled burn is important to land management and post-fire recovery efforts. Although soil thermal conductivity has been well studied for non-fire heated soils, comprehensive data that evaluate the long-term effect of extreme heating from a fire on the soil thermal conductivity are limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the long-term impact of fire on the effective thermal conductivity of soils by directly comparing fire-heated and no-fire control soils through a series of laboratory studies. The thermal conductivity was measured for ten soil samples from two sites within the Manitou Experimental Forest, Colorado, USA, for a range of water contents from saturation to the residual degree of saturation. The thermal conductivity measured was compared with independent estimates made using three empirical models from literature, including the Campbell et al. (1994), Cote and Konrad (2005), and Massman et al. (2008) models. Results demonstrate that for the test soils studied, the thermal conductivity of the fire-heated soils was slightly lower than that of the control soils for all observed water contents. Modeling results show that the Campbell et al. (1994) model gave the best agreement over the full range of water contents when proper fitting parameters were employed. Further studies are needed to evaluate the significance of including the influence of fire burn on the thermal properties of soils in modeling studies.

Evaluation of Model Concepts to Describe Water Transport in Shallow Subsurface Soil and Across the Soil–Air Interface

Soil water evaporation plays a critical role in mass and energy exchanges across the land–atmosphere interface. Although much is known about this process, there is no agreement on the best modeling approaches to determine soil water evaporation due to the complexity of the numerical modeling scenarios and lack of experimental data available to validate such models. Existing studies show numerical and experimental discrepancies in the evaporation behavior and soil water distribution in soils at various scales, driving us to revisit the key process representation in subsurface soil. Therefore, the goal of this work is to test different mathematical formulations used to estimate evaporation from bare soils to critically evaluate the model formulations, assumptions and surface boundary conditions. This comparison required the development of three numerical models at the REV scale that vary in their complexity in characterizing water flow and evaporation, using the same modeling platform. The performance of the models was evaluated by comparing with experimental data generated from a soil tank/boundary layer wind tunnel experimental apparatus equipped with a sensor network to continuously monitor water–temperature–humidity variables. A series of experiments were performed in which the soil tank was packed with different soil types. Results demonstrate that the approaches vary in their ability to capture different stages of evaporation and no one approach can be deemed most appropriate for every scenario. When a proper top boundary condition and space discretization are defined, the Richards equation-based models (Richards model and Richards vapor model) can generally capture the evaporation behaviors across the entire range of soil saturations, comparing well with the experimental data. The simulation results of the non-equilibrium two-component two-phase model which considers vapor transport as an independent process generally agree well with the observations in terms of evaporation behavior and soil water dynamics. Certain differences in simulation results can be observed between equilibrium and non-equilibrium approaches. Comparisons of the models and the boundary layer formulations highlight the need to revisit key assumptions that influence evaporation behavior, highlighting the need to further understand water and vapor transport processes in soil to improve model accuracy.

Numerical modeling of non-isothermal gas flow and NAPL vapor transport in soil

Abstract We introduce a mathematical model for the description of non-isothermal compressible flow of gas mixtures in heterogeneous porous media and we derive an efficient semi-implicit time-stepping numerical scheme for the solution of the governing equations. We experimentally estimate the order of convergence of the scheme in spatial variables and we present several computational studies that demonstrate the ability of the numerical scheme.

Exploring the Effects of Atmospheric Forcings on Evaporation: Experimental Integration of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer and Shallow Subsurface.

Evaporation is directly influenced by the interactions between the atmosphere, land surface and soil subsurface. This work aims to experimentally study evaporation under various surface boundary conditions to improve our current understanding and characterization of this multiphase phenomenon as well as to validate numerical heat and mass transfer theories that couple Navier-Stokes flow in the atmosphere and Darcian flow in the porous media. Experimental data were collected using a unique soil tank apparatus interfaced with a small climate controlled wind tunnel. The experimental apparatus was instrumented with a suite of state of the art sensor technologies for the continuous and autonomous collection of soil moisture, soil thermal properties, soil and air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed. This experimental apparatus can be used to generate data under well controlled boundary conditions, allowing for better control and gathering of accurate data at scales of interest not feasible in the field. Induced airflow at several distinct wind speeds over the soil surface resulted in unique behavior of heat and mass transfer during the different evaporative stages.