ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to advance our current understanding of soil moisture storage in subsurface and water infiltration rate in loess soil. Therefore, a set of experiments was conducted on two soil columns filled with silty clay loam, with and without applying cavity technical method. For the soil column applied with loess cavity, the ponding infiltration was simulated using HYDRUS-2D/3D, version 2.x and the simulated results were verified by those of observation. The results show that 1) the loess cavity significantly decreased the infiltration rates when the flux permeated through it (varying from 0.358 to 0.208 cm·min-1) as compared with no cavity soil column (varying from 0.408 to 0.241 cm·min-1); 2) similarly, the total cumulative infiltration and at the termination of wetting front advancement of soil column with cavity were 66 cm and 69 cm lower than that of no cavity soil column (76 and 78 cm), respectively. Consequently, the soil moisture at the subsurface and surrounding the loess cavity was effectively ameliorated; 3) the model was capable of predicting water infiltration processes in the soil column with loess cavity, and the root mean square error of simulated water contents, wetting front advancements, cumulative infiltrations, and infiltration rates were from 0.22 to 3.63 cm3·cm-3, 1.6 to 3.63 cm, 3.44 cm, and 0.026 cm·min-1, respectively. Overall, the findings in this study indicate that loess cavity can effectively increase soil moisture storage at shallow surface and the HYDRUS-2D/3D model is capable of simulating and predicting scenarios to help achieve stable shallow soil surface with loess cavity.