Fitting Soil Water Retention Curve of Coastal Saline Soil with Genetic Algorithm in Jiangsu Province

In this study the soil water potential and the corresponding volumetric moisture content of 6 coastal saline soil samples from Jiangsu Province are measured with Tensometer in laboratory, and the soil water retention curves are obtained. The fitting of Van Genuchten model and Brooks Corey model to the test data is implemented with a genetic algorithm based approach (GA approach), which is programmed in MATLAB. The applicability of the approach is evaluated. The results show that: (1) the GA approach can fit the soil water retention curves much better than models in RETC software, (2) the Van Genuchten model has the better fitting results than the Brooks Corey model, especially in the phase of low soil water potential.