| Abstract: | Periodic paddy field flooding is a major source of groundwater recharge. Many paddy fields thus are used as groundwater recharge ponds after harvesting the first crop of the summer. Following rice harvesting, paddy field surfaces may crack into fissures as a result of drainage and exposure to sunlight. Field observation indicates that applying precipitation to the paddy field can increase the rate of infiltration. To quantitatively evaluate the amount of infiltration in a cracked paddy field, this study sets up a simple soil crack model to simulate the field infiltration process. A three‐dimensional groundwater model FEMWATER is adopted to simulate water movement in the paddy field subjected to various crack conditions. Using the field and laboratory data of irrigation water requirements, soil physical properties, hydraulic conductivities and soil profiles obtained from Ten‐Chung, FEMWATER simulates the water movement in the dry cracked paddy. Simulation results show that if the cracks develop extensively and penetrate the ploughed soil, the infiltration rate may increase significantly. The infiltration fluxes of crack with depths of 80, 60 and 27·5 cm are 18·77, 14·50 and 8·06 times higher than that of 20 cm, respectively. The simulation results of cracks with 80 cm depth correlated closely with field observations. The results of the study elucidate the processes of unsaturated water movement in a dry cracked paddy field. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
