Effect of water quality on infiltration rate of soils

Abstract

A laboratory study was conducted to evaluate the effect of irrigation water quality on some soil physical properties and infiltration rate with two different well waters with Electrical Conductivity (EC) = 2 and = 6 dS/m and distilled water using three soils differ in their textures. One of the soil sample is from Alkarj area with EC = 19.0 dS/m and two samples from Dirab Experimental Station with EC equal 0.8 and 2.9 dS/m. Infiltration rate «'as determined and Kostiakov equation was fitted to the data with (r=0.920 – 0.999). The results revealed that infiltration was higher in sandy soils with the three different water quality used in the experiment. For the effect of water quality, the data showed a relative increase in infiltration rate with increasing the water salinity, but a difference \vas exist due to its contents of soluble sodium and sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), which its ranged between 1.72 to 7.25,