Impact of 3D root uptake on solute transport: a numerical study

Schroeder, Natalie [UCL] Javaux, Mathieu [UCL] Vanderborght, Jan [Forschungzcentrum Jülich, Agrosphere, Germany] Steffen, Bernhard [Forschungzcentrum Jülich, JSC, Germany] Vereecken, Harry [Forschungzcentrum Jülich, Germany]

Plant transpiration is an important component of the hydrological cycle. Through root water uptake, plants do not only affect the 3D soil water flow velocity distribution, but also solute movement in soil. This numerical study aims at investigating how solute fate is impacted by root uptake using the 3D biophysical model R-SWMS (Javaux et al., 2008). This model solves the Richards equation in 3D in the soil and the flow equation within the plant root xylem vessels. Furthermore, for solute transport simulations, the 3D particle tracker PARTRACE (Bechtold et al., 2011) was used. . We generated 3D virtual steady-state breakthrough curves (BTC) experiments in soils with transpiring plants. The averaged BTCs were then fitted with a 1D numerical flow model under steady-state conditions to obtain apparent CDE parameters. Two types of root architecture, a fibrous and a taprooted structure, were compared in virtual 3D experiments. The solute uptake type or the transpiration rate were also modified and we analyzed how these parameters affected apparent disperisivity and velocity profiles. Our simulation results show, that both, apparent velocity and dispersivity length are affected by water and solute root uptake. In addition, under high exclusion processes (slight or no active uptake), solute accumulates around roots and generates a long tailing to the breakthrough curves, which cannot be reproduced by 1D models that simulate root water uptake with solute exclusion. This observation may have an important impact on how to model pollutant mass transfer to groundwater at larger scales. Javaux, M., T. Schröder, J. Vanderborght, and H. Vereecken. 2008. Use of a three-dimensional detailed modeling approach for predicting root water uptake. Vadose Zone J. 7:1079-1088.doi: 10.2136/vzj2007.0115. Bechtold, M., S. Haber-Pohlmeier, J. Vanderborght, A. Pohlmeier, P.A. Ferre, and H. Vereecken. 2011. Near-surface solute redistribution during evaporation. Submitted to Geophys. Res. Lett., 2011GL047209