Identification of Water Deficit and Surplus Periods and Prediction of Profile Water Content from Surface Soil Water Status in Upland of Tripura

The climatic water balance using book keeping procedure was computed for ten years from 1985–1994 in upland soil of Tripura. May to October were found to form the major part of water surplus periods contributing to 99 per cent of annual water surplus. The water deficit periods were found to have major contributions from December to March with average contribution of about 86 per cent to the annual total. The months of March and November showed neither surplus nor any water deficit. The differential drying of soil profile during water deficit and water surplus period resulted into two distinct linear reciprocal relationships between surface (0–0.075 m) and profile (0–0.60 m) water. This gave highly significant correlation coefficients of 0.788 and 0.920. The statistical test showed that the predicted values from the relationship had hardly allY significant differences from observed values Of 1995 profile water during wet and dry periods, respectively.