Non-zero contact angles, soil water repellency, flow instabilities, and other complex behaviours are of increasing interest in soils and porous media research. Great opportunities lie in the discovery and discussion of 1) existing approaches that characterize and quantify wetting behaviours and 2) innovations that incorporate greater complexity in our conceptual and numerical models.

This is a general session about new findings and challenges in soil water relationships with implications across scales and disciplines. We encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines including hydrologic sciences, wildland fire, materials science, agricultural sciences, soil sciences, biogeosciences, geomorphology, and resource-based disciplines. We welcome all field, laboratory, modelling, and methodological based contributions, including those dealing with the development and use of new measurement and modeling tools, and assessment of multiscale and multidisciplinary interactions between processes. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 1) the relationship of soil and water characteristics in complex soils; 2) the dynamic relationship of water content and pressure at the wetting front of an imbibing liquid; 3) effects of natural and human-induced disturbances (such as fire, floods, land use change) on soil and water relationships and subsequent flow patterns in the field, and 4) multidisciplinary interactions between soil water relationships and, for example, soil chemistry, biology, and plant growth. By fostering discussion within and across scales in natural, synthetic, and anthropogenically altered systems, we seek to accelerate the science and enhance our ability to quantify, assess, and better manage soil water systems.