EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - UNESCO World Heritage

Pre-proposal No 2 SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF SOIL DEPTH AND TRANSPORT
PROPERTIES AS THE PRINCIPAL INDICATORS OF ENVIRONMENTAL SOIL FUNCTIONS
The teflon plate in a wooden frame will be attached to a telescopic support, enabling its operation on slopes. The measurement of the indicator concentrations
will be carried out by TTDR and though the image analysis of photographs taken on exposed profiles with colored stains.
2.3 Robustness analysis of the new method
We will perform tests, how soil hydraulic conductivity predictions obtained from concentration profiles of the bromide indicator at a given
time t will compare with those extracted from breakthrough curves, or, alternatively, from resident concentrations of the Brilliant Blue dye
tracer, established by means of image analysis. In such way, an optimum operational mode will be selected. Besides, soil hydraulic
conductivities are usually measured at different depths. According to our hypothesis, the selected soils do not manifest a considerable
differences in the hydraulic conductivity in the range of 0–70 cm, as reported by Pichler (1997). The results will also be compared to
hydraulic conductivities established by the direct measurement according to standard methods and predicted form retention curves.
Stage III: Determining spatial variability of the transport properties of selected forest
3.1 Field measurements will be carried out by the method developed in Stage II on slected transects.
They will be conducted on different scales, i. e. at distance ranging from meters over tens of meters, several hundred meters up to cca.
3 km. Overall, soil hydraulic conductivity will be measured at approximately 60 sites along each individual transect. In that process,
three sprinklers will be in use simultaneously. In order to secure gravity flow prior the experiment, the measurements will be carried out
mostly following snowmelt.
3.2 Determination of the soil hydraulic conductivity spatial variability
The coefficient of variation of the hydraulic conductivity reaches 40–320 %. The acquired data sets will therefore most likely feature a
high dispersion thus indicating non-symmetrical distribution. They will be analyzed for the best theoretical distribution – transformed normal
distribution, lognormal distribution, gamma or beta distribution. Transformed data will undergo geostatistical analysis and cross-validation
in order to identify the spatial autocorrelation structure.
3.3 Susceptibility of forest soils topreferntial flow
In each area, experimental micro-plots, 1 m x 1 m in size, will be selected. Each plot will be weekly treated with the Brilliant Blue dye
tracer, repeatedly dispersed on the forest floor by a sift. Another series of micro-plots will be treated by dye tracer solute applied by a
sprinkler developed during Stage II. Then, vertical soil profiles will be exposed, rendering dye patterns to be further analyzed. The profiles
will be photographed, the total area of coloured stains will be determined for each 10 cm layer and contours of the stained patterns
shall be extracted. The contours can be considered to some approximation fractals and their fractal dimension was estimated by the
box-counting method. The fractal dimension, total stained area and colored area in soil layers at different depths will serve as quantitative
indicators of susceptibility of preferential flow under different forest management. It is assumed that the single most important interface
that determines the formation of preferential flow in forest soils is the surface humus. To understand the nature of underlying transport
process, concentration profiles will be obtained form photographs by means of image analysis and then used for modeling using
the CDE approach, stochastic-convective and DLA approach.
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