Estimating the Hydraulic Parameters for Golf Course Soils Under Different Cultivation Practices and Product Treatments.

Various empirical models have been developed to quantify the soil water retention characteristics, which are fundamental parameters in any modeling study on water flow and solute transport in the vadose zone. In this study, four closed-form unimodal analytical functions (Brooks and Corey, van Genuchten, Kosugi, and Fredlund and Xing models), which describe the soil water retention curve (SWRC) and are easily incorporated into predictive pore-size distribution models for the hydraulic conductivity, were evaluated for soils on golf course fairways. Soil samples collected from two golf courses with different soil and turf characteristics under different cultivation practices (hollow-tine aerification and slicing) and different commercial product treatments were used to compare the performances of selected SWRC models on golf course unsaturated soils. Model parameters were estimated by fitting these non-linear models to the measured data.