Logan Anderson Oct.

8, 2020
Plant Available Water Blogspot 1
Josephine Series:

TAXONOMIC CLASS: Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Haploxerults

Calculations:
With the Water Retention Calculator which using the equation: Plant Available Water(PAW)=
Field Capacity(FC) – Permanent Wilting Point (PWP), we were able to determine:

A Horizon: PAW= 0.1999 – 0.0786

PAW= 0.1213 (cm3 water/cm3soil)

BA Horizon: PAW= 0.1988 – 0.0819

PAW= 0.1169 (cm3 water/cm3soil)

Bt1 Horizon: PAW= 0.2184 – 0.0819

PAW= 0.1208 (cm3 water/cm3soil)

Bt2 Horizon: PAW= 0.2267 – 0.1130

PAW= 0.1136 (cm3 water/cm3soil)

Total Root Zone PAW:

Equation: Root Zone PAW= A Paw (A depth/root zone depth) + BA Paw (BA depth/root zone
depth) + Bt1 PAW ( Bt1 depth/root zone depth) + Bt2 PAW (Bt2 depth/root zone depth)

Root Zone PAW %= 0.1213 (7cm/81cm) + 0.1169 (23 cm/81cm) + 0.1208 ( 41cm/81cm) +
0.1136 (81cm/81cm)
= 0.010 + 0.0332 + 0.0611 + 0.1136
= .2179 (cm3 water/cm3soil)

Root Zone PAW total = Root Zone Depth (% PAW)

= 81cm (.2179)
= 17.65 cm of PAW

The textural triangle does leave room for errors when it comes to calculating the total plant
available water. Specifically, to the Josephine soil, as well as many others, large chunks of many
of these horizons consist of potentially 10% of larger rock fragments, immediately point to less
PAW. With such a large proportion of each horizon potentially having this amount of rock
fragments. The top section of the soil profile also has a large portion of organic matter, which
could help to alleviate some of the imbalance in PAW that could have come from the larger rock
fragments found throughout the layers.
References:
K.E. Saxton et al., 1986 
Estimating generalized soil-water characteristics from texture. 
Soil Sci. Soc. Amer. J. 
50(4):1031-1036

“SoilWeb.” SoilWeb: An Online Soil Survey Browser | California Soil Resource Lab,
casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/gmap/.

Nrcs. “NRCS Official Soil Series Description View By Name.” USDA,

soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/osdname.aspx.