A STUDY OF SOIL MOISTURE MOVEMENT IN UNSATURATED ZONE BY TRITIUM TAGGING METHOD

Abstract

Water and life are inseparable. h 11 over the world, water management is faced with highly and very responsible tasks. Nuclear techniques are now being widely used for hydrological investigations. Most of the nuclear methods are almost direct and thus avoiding many complicated features of the conventional methods. In 1968,Munnich and his associates developed the tracer technique to study the movement of soil moisture in unsturated soils and also for evaluation of recharge. The present work is based on the same principle. The present work studied the movement of tracer by using two method (i) point injection method (ii) using tritiated water for ponding. For first method tritium was injected at 25 cm depth below ground surface under ponding condition. The moisture content and tritium content is determined at various depths at 6 hours interval till 60 hours. It is found by this method I that after the moisture content and peak of the tritium is stabilized. The shift in the peak is 10 cm which give by using Datta and Rama approach 25 percent of the ponding water goes down as recharge within 60 hours.