Hydrostructural Pedology, New Scientific Discipline Allowing for Physical Modelling of ‘Green Water’ Dynamics in the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere System

Abstract

Using a new paradigm of soil characterization and modeling in agro environmental sciences, named hydrostructural pedology, we were able to show that the “green water” concept of agronomists corresponds exactly to the pedostructural water concept which was physically defined in this paradigm. The water in the pedostructure of soils is composed of two types of water, named micro and macro, nested one in the other. They are differentiated by their chemical potential related to their position in the pedostructure: inside primary aggregates or outside of them in the interpedal space. A fundamental physics of the pedostructural water could be developed within this new paradigm.  Finally, the soil medium can now be considered as the location in which the free water (named also blue water), coming from surface (rainfall, irrigation, etc.) and going down by gravity through the macro pore space of the soil, is partially absorbed by the pedostructure, and becomes then the ‘green water’ of the soil.  Soil green water is, in fact, the soil water reserve available to plant roots and subsequently transpired by the plants into the canopy. The soil-water model Kamel®, built according to this new paradigm, is the only model able to physically simulate the opposite dynamic cycles of these two kinds of water (blue and green) within the soil-plant-atmosphere system, their exchanges and equilibrium states according to time, at each depth of the pedon. Important implications about strategy of soil-water characterization, mapping and modeling are given for sustainable development and management of agricultural zones.