Studies in water and solute movement in unsaturated porous materials

The research work embodied in this submission comprises the latter half of research carried out over approximately a thirty year period in the area of hydrology usually known as unsaturated zone hydrology or soil water hydrology. The studies have been unified into a generally coherent whole by concentrating on two main aims which were established in the early years of the research, namely the development and testing of nondestructive measuring equipment capable of adequately characterizing the properties and behaviour of soil water systems under naturally-occurring environmental conditions, and the analysis and modelling of the processes of water and solute movement in unsaturated porous materials for a wide range of material properties and boundary conditions. The outworking of these aims has resulted in original research involving instrumentation developments, experimental studies both in the laboratory and the field, analytical studies and computer-based numerical solutions. The work has been described in eighty research publications which are listed in the following pages. The first thirty seven of these were submitted to The University of New South Wales in 1975 for the degree of Doctor of Science. They have been included in the present list to enable the scope and developing pattern of the entire research programme to be available for study and to provide the background for the current work. The remaining publications, 38-80 inclusive, describe the research work covered in this submission. Copies of these papers may be found in Section 5 . The last paper in the list was published in 1995; however, the particular journal issue appeared in the earlier part of that year and, accordingly, satisfies the regulation requiring that a paper be published twelve months prior to the submission lodgement date