Soil Profile Builder
software user guide
The Soil Profile Builder software is designed to help you establish your soils water holding characteristics – field capacity and
stress point (how big the bucket is and at what point it need to be refilled) for irrigation. It uses data from the New Zealand Soils
Database to determine appropriate physical and hydraulic properties for a range of soil textures. This information is worked out for
each layer (horizon) that makes up your soil profile.
• The soil inputs are texture and stone content
within each layer (horizon) of the soil profile.
• The crop inputs are the type, the root depth
and the drought tolerance (stress point).
• The outputs give guideline values for the
field capacity and stress point for irrigation,
plus the total available water and the
readily available water in the soil profile.
Inputs (which you can change) are ‘white’ boxes
and outputs (the model predictions) are ‘grey’
boxes. All calculations are summed from the top to
the bottom of the soil profile. Where soil moisture
sensors are employed, the bottom of the profile
should be set to the deepest measurement point.
The soil profile builder screen is shown opposite.
Step 1: Define the soil texture
The soil profile can be defined by up to five
horizons, or layers of a different texture.
For each horizon, the user must enter the:
1. horizon number (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5)
2. thickness/depth (e.g. 20 cm)
3. texture (e.g. sandy loam)
4. stone content by volume (e.g. 50%)
Soil texture is classified by the % of sand, silt and
clay particles. Once the soil texture has been
chosen, the software then assigns appropriate
values for the sand, silt and clay fraction based on
the USDA ‘soil texture triangle’. These fractions
can be adjusted if the actual data is available.
If the soil’s bulk density is known, then a measured
value can be entered, otherwise a default value
(e.g. the national average value) will be assigned by
clicking on the check box.
Clicking on the ‘Update profile’ check box
retrieves the appropriate physical and hydraulic properties for a given soil texture and depth. This process must be followed for
each soil horizon.
The left hand panel describes an example soil texture profile: in this example 20 cm of silt loam sits on top of 80 cm of sandy loam.
The stone content increases beyond a depth of 50 cm.
The right panel shows the soil’s bulk density, stone content and volumetric water content at Field Capacity (FC), Stress Point (SP) and
wilting point (WP). The SP is defined by the water content at a water potential of -1.0 bar.
Soil Profile Builder [Link]
Methods to estimate stone content and bulk density can be found in most standard soil
text books.
Soil water availability refers to the capacity of a soil to retain water that is available to
the plants. Following heavy rain or irrigation the soil (which is saturated) drains quickly
until field capacity is reached. The plant then uptakes water for transpiration and soil
losses water by evaporation reducing soil moisture until a point is reached where the
plants can extract no more water. This point is referred to as the permanent wilting point
(the plant dies). The total plant available water, TAW (mm), is the difference between
FC and WP. However, for each crop there is an intermediate point between FC and WP,
where the plant shows the first sign of water stress (the point at which production/
quality is compromised). This is referred to as the stress point, SP (mm), where SP =
(1-p)*TAW, p being the drought tolerance. These values are crop-dependent and also
include the root depth. In general the default ‘Drought tolerance’ value is 50%
Step 2: Choose the crop
The next step is to select the crop type. Typical (default) values for the root depth
and the drought tolerance have been adopted from the FAO-56 paper on crop water
requirements (Allen et al, 1998) which can be downloaded from the link provided on the
CropIRLog web page ([Link]/ref-et/[Link]). Here the drought
tolerance, p, represents the fraction of TAW that each crop can extract from a given
root-zone depth. These can be changed if you have site specific data.
Step 3: Calculate the irrigation set points
Once the soil profile and crop type are entered, you then click on
the calculate button to generate values for the irrigation set points.
Step 4: Interpretation of the outputs
Two outputs are generated by the software: the irrigation trigger points and the
plant available water.
• Figure 9 shows the full point and refill point for a given soil profile depth and
crop type. These numbers are required inputs for the CropIRLog software. In this
example the calculations are integrated (i.e. summed up) from the soil surface
to the bottom of the soil profile (i.e. 0.0 to 100 cm). We assume that grapes can
extract 45% of the total available water from their root-zone depth (i.e. 100 cm)
before they begin to exhibit symptoms of water stress. Other set points can be
deduced by changing the drought tolerance (e.g. from 45% to 60%) or the root
depth (e.g. 100 cm to 50 cm) to reflect growers preference to impose more water
stress late in the season, or to reflect shallower roots on younger vines.
• Figure 10 shows plant available water within the soil profile. The total available
water is the amount of water held in the soil profile between field capacity and
wilting point. The readily available water is the amount of water held in the soil
profile between field capacity and stress point. In this example the total available
water in the top 1.0 m is 174.5 mm, and the grapes should be able to extract about
70 mm from the root-zone before any signs of water stress occur.
In some cases it could be necessary to set the soil profile depth to be greater than the
root depth. One example would be when soil moisture monitoring extends to 100 cm
yet the crop roots only extend to a depth of 50 cm. In that case the irrigation trigger
points would reflect expected values obtained by soil moisture monitoring.
Soil Profile Builder [Link]
