Other Processes - Simulation Examples

Some of the process descriptions included in MIKE SHE are too complex to be verified against analytical solutions, including transport of “reactive” sol­utes in the unsaturated zone under different soil hydrological conditions, plant uptake of solutes, transport in macropores in the unsaturated zone and the influence of temperature and soil moisture content on degradation processes.

To illustrate one of these cases, plant uptake of solutes is simulated in Figure 34.11. If plant uptake is included a “concentration factor” (see Eq. (34.19))is needed, indicating to which extent solutes are taken up by the plants.

Figure 34.11    Illustration of the effect of plant uptake on solute breakthrough. Plant uptake was simulated with f_c = 0.5. The early peak concentrations arise from macro pore transport and were almost alike in the two simulations.