Assessment of soil infiltration capacity by using portable rainfall simulator

Under study was the possible assessment of soil infiltration capacity by using a portable rainfall simulator to irrigate a small area and avoid the development of rill erosion. For soil infiltration capacity an equation has been suggested, including erosion rain index AI as a criterion of similarity. The equation was verified for natural rainfalls (for catchments and runoff plots) and for artificial rain (for a runoff plot 5 m long and 5 m 2 in size). To evaluate the soil infiltration capacity, the small runoff plots can be used, on which no rill erosion doesn’t take place. To verify this affirmation two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment a large rainfall simulator and a runoff plot 3 m long having the area 3 m 2 in the field were used. Rill erosion took place on this runoff plot. In the second experiment a portable rainfall simulator and a runoff plot shaped as a circle with the area 0.05 m 2 were used (rill erosion did not take place). The experiment was conducted in the laboratory by using the soil monoliths taken in the same field. For both rainfall simulators the raindrops were of the same size, they fell down from the same height, the rainfall intensity was constant, but the values of these parameters seemed to be different. In experiments a close dependence between the soil infiltration capacity and the index AI was established. The use of the portable rainfall simulator requires expenses to a lesser extent.