Estimating soil water saturation from morphological soil indicators in a pedologically contrasted Mediterranean region

This study aims to test the use of morphological soil indicators for predicting spatially variable water-saturation durations in a pedologically contrasted Mediterranean region (Peyne valley, Languedoc, France). Seven candidate morphological indicators that were identified in previous studies were tested by means of one-way analyses of variance performed over a set of 84 soil horizons for which water saturation has been measured weekly for 2 years. The results showed that half of the total variance of water-saturation duration could be explained by a morphological indicator. However, this result required (a) a prior stratification of the set of horizons in horizon groups defined according to the soil landscape units of the region and (b) a selection of appropriate morphological features for each horizon group.