Soil Quality
Fact Sheets - Water Availability
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- Water Availability 213 Kb PDF
Summary
Of the water entering a soil profile, some will be stored within the rooting zone for plant use, some will evaporate and some will drain away from the plant root zone. Plant available water is the difference between field capacity (the maximum amount of water the soil can hold) and the wilting point (where the plant can no longer extract water from the soil) measured over 100 cm or maximum rooting depth (Hunt and Gilkes 1992).
There will still be water present in the soil profile, however it is contained in pores that are too small for the plant roots to access. Soil texture, soil structure and hence plant rooting depths are the crucial factors in determining the amount of water available for plants to access.
