TY - JOUR AU - Sommella, Angelo AU - Santini, Alessandro AU - Severino, Gerardo AU - Comegna, Alessandro PY - 2007/12/31 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - BEHAVIOUR OF SALT DISTRIBUTION IN DRY SOILS JF - Journal of Agricultural Engineering JA - J Agric Eng VL - 38 IS - 4 SE - Original Articles DO - 10.4081/jae.2007.4.21 UR - https://www.agroengineering.org/jae/article/view/jae.2007.4.21 SP - 21-24 AB - The behaviour of soil salinity in dry conditions is investigated by means of analytical tools. We present a closed solution for advective transport, and apply it to two typical real-world scenarios: i) a finite depthdistributed (i.e. Heaviside-type), and ii) an instantaneous top-surface broadcasted (i.e. Dirac-type) saline pulse. Our analytical solution is then incorporated into a stochastic stream tube model to compute the mean salinity profile in a heterogeneous field. An unusual phenomenon of plume contraction is observed when the soil is getting drier and drier (typically at long times during a water redistribution period). It is emphasized that our results are in agreement with previous analytical studies (see e.g. [22,23,24]), and match quite well synthetic as well as real data provided that sandy soils are dealt with. ER -