Modelling soil water characteristics of an inland valley soil

Measured soil characteristics data served as an input to the model to generate the simulated data, subsequently compared and subjected to coefficient of determination (R²) to serve as a goodness-of-fit measurement. The soils textural class varied from Sand, Loamy sand and Sandy loam. There was a good fit between the measured and simulated soil water characteristics for Sandy loam and Sand texture class. For sandy loam soil (R² = 0.77, P<0.05; r.m.s.e = 1.00) for bulk density, field capacity (R² = 0.60 P<0.05; r.m.s.e = 55.63), available water content (R² = 0.73, P<0.05; r.m.s.e =1.11), permanent wilting point (R² =0.74, P<0.05; r.m.s.e = 4.74 and saturated moisture content (R² = 0.50, P<0.05; r.m.s.e = 19.53). SOILWAT model had a fairly good prediction for sand soil (R² =0.57, P<0.05; r.m.s.e = 0.89) for bulk density, R² = 0.64, P<0.05; r.m.s.e = 16.22 for saturated moisture content. A poor fit was observed for loamy sand soil and saturated for hydraulic conductivity for all the textural classes.