Evaluation of models for the prevision of water infiltration in the soil under savanna

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate, in bare savanna soil, the Green-Ampt infiltration model, a proposal of variable saturated hidraulic due to superficial sealing. The Green-Ampt modified by Mein & Larson (GAML) was also tested on bare soil and with dead vegetation cover. Ten infiltrometers and a rain simulator, installed in a Red-Yellow Latosol on the Fazenda Água Limpa, Federal District, were used. Comparing the results, the GAML model simulated well the rate infiltration and accumulated infiltration values in the infiltrometers with dead vegetation cover but with naked soil the simulations were prejudiced. With naked soil, using the proposal to adopt the variable saturated hidraulic condutivity due to superficial sealing, the Green-Ampt model had a better performance compared with the GAML model in the prevision of water infiltration.