| The hyrdrophysical properties of soils that are currently assumed for the description of moisture transfer are generally constant. These are total moisture capacity (TMC), porosity (da), wilting point (WP), maximum hygroscopic moisture (MHM), maximum molecular moisture capacity (MMMC), filtration coefficient (Kf ), etc. Soil scientists use these constants to describe the hydrophysical soil properties during the solution of problems of water flow under saturated and unsaturated conditions. However, to describe the water regimes of real soil-plant systems as agrolandscape elements, it is necessary to take into account their interaction with the atmosphere and the dynamic changes that occur in the process of their adaptation to the water balance regime, climate, anthropogenic impacts, etc. A.M. Globus noted an essential feature of this information base: “this enables one to describe the soil subsystem of the large soil–plant–atmosphere system as a dynamic organism with distributed parameters that is generally characterized by different values of moisture, moisture conductivity, and potential in different points of the soil profile at different points of time” [۱]. While providing the qualitative description of the system, static constants cannot reflect the dynamics of hydrological processes in the soil and the density of moisture distribution in the aeration zone. In addition, they do not take into account the formation and development of the root system during water absorption. Therefore, the solution of one of the essential problems of agroecology, i.e., the optimization of water supply for agrocenoses, requires the spatial and temporal description of basic hydrophysical soil properties in the form of mathematical models with soil hydrophysical functions that describe the spatial and temporal pattern of moisture reserves and their motion, rather than with “dead” constants. |
