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DIVISION S-1 - SOIL PHYSICS

A New Perspective on Soil Thermal Properties

^a Dep. of Agronomy, Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA 50011, USA
^b Hebei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 598 W. Heping Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050051, PRC

* Corresponding author (rhorton{at}iastate.edu)

The soil thermal properties—heat capacity (C), thermal diffusivity (), and thermal conductivity ()—are important in many agricultural, engineering, and meteorological applications. Soil thermal properties are largely dependent on the volume fraction of water (), volume fraction of solids (v_s), and volume fraction of air (n_a) in the soil. In many natural settings , v_s, and n_a vary greatly over time and space, but data showing the effects of these variations on thermal properties are not readily available. We used a heat-pulse method to measure the thermal properties of 59 packed columns of four medium-textured soils covering large ranges of , v_s, and n_a. The measured data reveal the commonly overlooked but dominant influence of n_a on soil thermal properties. Notably, the measurements show that the of these soils at 20°C can be accurately described as a decreasing linear function of n_a . Good agreement exists between the measured data and common models for and C.

Abbreviations: C, heat capacity • TDR, time domain reflectometry • , thermal diffusivity • , thermal conductivity • , volume fraction of water • v_s, volume fraction of solids • n_a, volume fraction of air

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