Evaporation from porous media as influenced by osmotic potential

The measurement of the water potential is important to characterize solute transport in soil and water uptake by plants. Many researchers have characterized the matric potential and its impact on evaporation from porous media. However, only few studies have been carried out to characterize the effect of the osmotic potential. In this study, we investigated the simultaneous influences of the osmotic and matric potentials on the evaporation from soil. Our hypothesis was that both potential components affect the two stages of evaporation and that the osmotic potential in direct vicinity of the soil surface is a controlling variable. To meet our objective, we performed evaporation experiments on columns filled with pure quartz sand and natural soil materials with different textures, under climate-controlled laboratory conditions. The soils were initially saturated with different concentrations of saline solutions and evaporation from each column was measured daily. Our results show that the osmotic potential reduced the amount of evaporated water from the investigated porous media. The amount of reduction due to the osmotic potential is compared with model calculations that consider the total water potential at the soil surface.