TY  - JOUR
A1  - Buitenwerf, Robert
A1  - Kulmatiski, Andrew
A1  - Higgins, Steven Ian
T1  - Soil water retention curves for the major soil types of the Kruger National Park
T2  - Koedoe
N2  - Soil water potential is crucial to plant transpiration and thus to carbon cycling and biosphere–atmosphere interactions, yet it is difficult to measure in the field. Volumetric and gravimetric water contents are easy and cheap to measure in the field, but can be a poor proxy of plant-available water. Soil water content can be transformed to water potential using soil moisture retention curves. We provide empirically derived soil moisture retention curves for seven soil types in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. Site-specific curves produced excellent estimates of soil water potential from soil water content values. Curves from soils derived from the same geological substrate were similar, potentially allowing for the use of one curve for basalt soils and another for granite soils. It is anticipated that this dataset will help hydrologists and ecophysiologists understand water dynamics, carbon cycling and biosphere–atmosphere interactions under current and changing climatic conditions in the region.
KW  - Soil water retention curve
KW  - Kruger National Park
Y1  - 2014
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/36049
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-360498
SN  - 2071-0771
SN  - 0075-6458
N1  - Copyright Notice: © 2014. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS OpenJournals. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 56
IS  - 1
SP  - 1
EP  - 9
PB  - South African National Parks
CY  - Pretoria
ER  -