Co-Authors:
Russo, D., Dept of Soil Phys, Inst of Soils + Water, Agric Rsch Org, The Volcani Ctr, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Abstract:
The results of first-order analyses, based on stochastic continuum presentation of unsaturated flow and a general Lagrangian description of the transport,18 are used to assess quantitatively how much information about solute spreading in partially saturated heterogeneous formations is lost in two-dimensional presentation, when one of the horizontal coordinates is suppressed. The main results of this study suggest that the formations of given statistics and given soil texture, two-dimensional presenation may moderately diminish solute spreading on the direction of the mean flow (vertical), and may considerably enhance lateral solute spreading as compared with three-dimensional presentation, especially in formations of fine-textured soil material and/or formations in which log-conductivity horizontal correlation scale is small compared with its vertical correlation scale. The results of this study may be used for testing and interpretation of results of numerical simulations of flow and transport in partially saturated, heterogeneous formations; in particular those involving vertical slice flow domains, formulated as a two-dimensional flow problems.