Open Tension-disk Infiltrometer Meta-database (OTIM)

Saturated and near-saturated hydraulic conductivities K (mm/h) are important soil properties that determine the partitioning of precipitation into surface runoff and infiltration and indicate soil susceptibility to preferential flow as well as soil aeration properties. Measurements of saturated and near-saturated soil hydraulic conductivities are time consuming and not practical for larger scales where they are mostly needed. The research community has therefore put effort in deriving pedotransfer functions to predict K using proxy variables. The precision of such pedotransfer functions has been very modest, however. As a result, recent studies have focused on assembling and analyzing bigger databases, aiming to find better predictors for the saturated and near-saturated soil hydraulic conductivities. A prominent example is the meta-database on tension-disk infiltrometer data compiled by Jarvis et al. (2013. Influence of soil, land use and climatic factors on the hydraulic conductivity of soil. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 17(12), 5185-5195), who found that climate variables were better correlated with K than soil properties. OTIM (Open Tension-disk Infiltrometer Meta-database) builds on this database, adding 577 new data entries collated from 48 additional peer-reviewed scientific publications. OTIM contains more detailed information on local climate as well as land use and management.