Infiltration is the act of water moving from the land surface into the soil. Usually, we think about infiltration occurring in response to rainfall, where water is applied over the whole land surface. In that case, infiltration is important because it’s one of the deciding factors in how much rainfall …
Hydraulic conductivity is the term used to describe how easily a fluid moves through a porous medium. In the case of water infiltrating into soils, the fluid is the water and the porous medium is the soil. We often use K to represent hydraulic conductivity when we are writing equations. …
In Watershed Hydrology, we’ve been talking about soil moisture and water potential in relation to evaporation and infiltration. An important concept is the idea of the unsaturated zone, where the pores (or open spaces) in the soil, sediment or rock are not completely filled with water most of the time. …