Information
Description of study
What?
A new experimental design for measuring overland flow was implemented in central-north Queensland.
When and Where?
The site consists of Red Earths and is characterised by non-calcareous profiles, massive structure, earthy fabric, mineralogy dominated by quartz, kaolin, and iron oxides and hydroxides. The soils are deep loamy soils which have clay contents ranging from 13-26% (0 – 0.60m depth).
The climate at the site is tropical, semi-arid and is warm and dry in winter, and hot and intermittently wet in summer. The low, open woodlands present on site are dominated by Eucalyptus and /or Acacia species and support a discontinuous ground cover of Spinifex (Trioda pungens), black spear grass (Heteropogan contours) and white spear grass (Aristida leptopoda). Beef cattle are present on site with a stocking rate of 1 beast per hectare.
How?
A cascade system of five troughs, 10 m long and offset at 25 m intervals, monitored a 100 m section of slope located 2-3km from a subdued topographic divide (Figure 1). Overland flow collected in troughs was led into calibrated tipping buckets with capacity ranging from 3.14 to 3.451. Each bucket assembly was levelled and secured to bolts acting as posts at the bottom of a concrete pit. Events were monitored by paired Ross Cassette Recorders, via a magnet attached to the bucket and a mercoid switch secured to the concrete pit wall in order to minimize vibration.
Rainfall amount and intensity was measured and recorded at a 1 min time base by two Rimco tipping bucket rain gauges attached to Ross Cassette recorders. The soil hydraulic properties were measures outside the runoff plots. The surface field saturated hydraulic conductivities, K were determined in July 1982 from detached soil cores using an infiltrometer ring and a constant head permeameter maintaining a constant water level of 0.04 m, above the soil surface. Figure 1 details the site design.
Project administration
Site identifier code: N/A
Principal investigator: Bonell M, Williams J
Principal data manager: N/A
Principal organizations: James Cook University, CSIRO
Data custodian: Division of Soils, CSIRO
Key co-operators: N/A
Data access policy: Research has been published but base data is not archived
Planned pathway for data: completed study, no evidence of formal database records.
Data warehousing: for ongoing studies N/A
Planned data upload frequency: for ongoing studies N/A
Key references and sources of this data synthesis
These data summaries have been extracted from:
- i. Bonell M, Williams J. (1986). The generation and redistribution of overland flow on a massive oxic soil in a eucalypt woodland within the semi-arid tropics of North Australia. Hydrological Processes 1: 31-46.
Keywords:
Eucalypt woodlans, semi-arid tropics, massive oxic soils, overland flow, infiltration, time to runoff