Infiltration Modeling in Rainfed Area of Jammu Under Various Land Management Practices

The ability to understand soil infiltration characteristics is essential for designing an effective irrigation system and demonstrating the usefulness of a water harvesting structure in groundwater recharge. Water infiltration into the soil is an important indicator of irrigation and drainage efficiency as well as improving water availability for plant growth, metabolism, boosting agricultural yields, and lowering erosion. A study was conducted to assess the infiltration rates of soils under various land management practices using Double ring and Mini disk infiltrometer in Kaloha Block KVK, SKUAST-J of Samba district of J&K, India. The soil in the study area is found sandy clay loam. The average basic infiltration rate in cultivable land ranged between 1.5-1.2 cm/h, while in fallow land it is varied from 0.9-1.3 cm/h and in uncultivable land, it is ranged from 0.8-1 cm/h using the double ring infiltrometer and the same is compared by using Mini disk infiltrometer. In the study, four infiltration models, Kostiakov, Horton, Phillip and Green-Ampt are selected. These four infiltration models are chosen based on their practical utility and the results revealed that, Horton infiltration model is selected to be the best-fit infiltration model based on the highest values 0.9842 of the coefficient of determination for uncultivable land condition, while Kostiakov infiltration model best fits in the cultivable land condition with R² value of .9841 and Philip model for Fallow land with high value of R² as 0.9974.