COMPARISON OF SELECTED PEDOTRANSFER FUNCTIONS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF SOIL WATER RETENTION CURVES

Soil water retention curves were measured using a sandbox and the pressure plate extractor method on undisturbed soil samples from the Borska Lowland. The basic soil properties (e.g. soil texture, dry bulk density) of the samples were determined. The soil water retention curve was described using the van Genuchten model (Van Genuchten, 1980). The parameters of the model were obtained using the RETC program (Van Genuchten et al., 1991). For the determination of the soil water retention curve parameters, two pedotransfer functions (PTF) were also used that were derived for this area by Skalova (2003) and the Rosetta computer program (Schaap et al., 2001). The performance of the PTFs was characterized using the mean difference and root mean square error.