Preface

The world is facing many environmental, food, nutritional, social, and economic security challenges. Most alarming is the conservation of natural resources, especially soil and water. Meeting food and nutritional security targets requires the implementation of time demand policies that ensure soil and water retention for sustainable productivity. This book examines ways of improving soil moisture management to support a sustainable ecosystem for the future world.

> **Ram Swaroop Meena** Institute of Agricultural Sciences, India

> > **Rahul Datta** Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic

**Chapter 1**

**Abstract**

Components

hydraulic conductivity, irrigation

**1. Introduction**

**1**

Delineation of Soil Moisture

*Rajan Bhatt and Ram Swaroop Meena*

Potentials and Moisture Balance

Root architecture in soils is directly affecting crop yield potential, through influencing the moisture potential of soil and its balance components, as only transpiration share is useful for them. Soil moisture potential responsible for the soil moisture curves on the basis of differential energy states is quite important. Generally, a soil moisture flow rate is considered for its kinetic energy. Consequently, soil moisture energy state is defined by its equivalent potential energy, which is by virtue of its place in a force field which could assist to improve the water-use efficiency. Irrigation water losses significantly occur under the flood irrigation through evaporation, seepage, and drainage. While the soil moisture potential declines with help of the tensiometer, and significantly save the irrigation water. For evaluating the performance of any resource conservation technologies (RCT) in the region, estimation of the evapotranspiration (ET) is very important to analyze the effect of the RCT. It is also helpful in balancing the nutrient inflows in the plants through roots, which results to the improvement of land and water productivity. Hence, delineation of the soil moisture potentials and moisture balance components is important to improve the land as well as water productivity; it makes the livelihood security better in the water-stressed regions on the globe. This chapter deals with the methodological part of soil moisture potentials and moisture balance components, which is useful for the policymakers, modelers, scientists, students, and teachers engaged in the irrigation experiments under texturally divergent soils.

**Keywords:** moisture potential, tensiometer, seepage, drainage, unsaturated

The complex nature of the soil pore space and the water held therein makes it difficult to delineate the soil-water interface and moisture advancements in the soil, which is further influenced by soil matrix geometry. Soil moisture is the amount of moisture present in soil pores, which is a must for all important ecological processes and plays a critical and significant role in all the physiological processes. Throughout the globe, water scarcity is an emerging problem that must be worked out for sustaining agricultural growth [1–3]. Different RCTs are recommended for having improved water productivities across the globe [4–6]. The scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center generate groundwater and soil moisture drought
