UNIVERSITY OF ZAMBIA

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

AEN 3412 SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION

ASSIGNMENT 2
DUE: 05/09/23

QUESTION 1

A student of Agricultural Engineering was asked to determine the amount of soil moisture in the
field station. The field is on a Wheat crop with a root depth of 1.2 m. On the first day, a rainfall
depth of 40 mm was recorded. The mean crop evapotranspiration during the 5‐day period is 10
mm/day. On the second day, an irrigation depth of 20 mm was added to the field, and on the
same day, there was a capillary rise of 20 mm. Find the amount of water that will be retained in
the root zone after the 5-day period, given that before the rain the mass of the soil sample taken
from the field station (not including any container) before and after drying is respectively 0.30 g
and 0.19 g and the bulk density of the soil sample is 1.20 g/cm 3. State the assumptions taken in
the above calculation.

QUESTION 2

A student of the Department of Agricultural Engineering set up an experiment in the Agricultural

Engineering Laboratory using the falling head permeameter to establish the hydraulic
conductivity for a soil sample. His setup was with a soil sample length of 0.40 m, with the inlet
tube diameter and soil sample diameter of 0.010 m and 0.24 m, respectively. Determine the
hydraulic conductivity of his sample when it was found that the potential head was 1.70 m
initially with a subsequent head drop of 0.50 m after 60 hours, respectively.