An Improved Method to Estimate Soil Hydrodynamic and Hydraulic Roughness Parameters by Using Easily Measurable Data During Flood Irrigation Experiments and Inverse Modelling

Surface irrigation is known as a highly water-consuming system and needs to be optimized to save water. Models can be used for this purpose but require soil parameters at the field scale. This paper aims to estimate effective soil parameters by combining: (i) a surface flow-infiltration model, namely CALHY; (ii) an automatic fitting algorithm based on the SIMPLEX method; and (iii) easily accessible and measurable data, some of which had never been used in such a process, thus minimizing parameter estimation errors. The validation of the proposed approach was performed through three successive steps: (1) examine the physical meaning of the fitted parameters; (2) verify the accuracy of the proposed approach using data that had not been served in the fitting process; and (3) validate using data obtained from independent irrigation events. Three parameters were estimated with a low uncertainty: the saturated hydraulic conductivity Ks, the hydraulic roughness k, and the soil water depletion ∆θ. The estimation uncertainty of the soil surface depressional storage parameter H0 was of the same order of magnitude of its value. All experimental datasets were simulated very well. Performance criteria were similar during both the fitting and validation stages.