A model for soil surface evaporation based on Campbell’s retention curve

The objective of this study was to develop and verify a simple analytical model for one-dimensional non-steady upward flow from shallow and falling water table with minimum input data. Consequently, an analytical model was derived based on the Richards’ equation with the Campbell’s parametric retention model. This study proposes a model that uses the measurement of water table depth drawdown and some soil physical properties to estimate evaporation, instead of measuring evaporation rate itself. Nine relatively large lysimeters were packed with sandy loam, silty clay loam, and silty clay soil textures to obtain the data needed for evaluating the proposed model. The results indicate a reasonable agreement between the experimental data and the proposed model (root mean square error, RMSE = 2.11–4.22 mm/day). For the experimental period (64 days), however, there is some discrepancy between observation and simulation data. The reasons for this discrepancy may be attributed to vapor upward flow, evaporation which takes place from the lysimeters side gaps resulting from soil shrinkage and collapse of macropores resulting from soil packing.