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Specific yield, also known as the drainable porosity, is a ratio, less than or equal to the effective porosity, indicating the volumetric fraction of the bulk aquifer volume that a given aquifer will yield when all the water is allowed to drain out of it under the forces of gravity:
The fraction of water held back in the aquifer is known as specific retention. Thus it can be said that porosity is the sum of specific yield and specific retention. Specific yield of soils differ from each other in the sense that some soil types have strong molecular attraction with the water held in their pores while others have less.
Specific storage or storativity: a measure of the amount of water a confined aquifer will give up for a certain change in head; Transmissivity The rate at which water is transmitted through whole thickness and unit width of an aquifer under a unit hydraulic gradient. It is equal to the hydraulic conductivity times the thickness of an aquifer;
Unconfined aquifers have storativities (typically called specific yield) greater than 0.01 (1% of bulk volume); they release water from storage by the mechanism of actually draining the pores of the aquifer, releasing relatively large amounts of water (up to the drainable porosity of the aquifer material, or the minimum volumetric water content
The source term, N (length per time), represents the addition of water in the vertical direction (e.g., recharge). By incorporating the correct definitions for saturated thickness, specific storage, and specific yield, we can transform this into two unique governing equations for confined and unconfined conditions:
Available water is that which the plants can utilize from the soil within the range between field capacity and wilting point. Roughly speaking for agriculture (top layer soil), soil is 25% water , 25% air , 45% mineral , 5% other; water varies widely from about 1% to 90% due to several retention and drainage properties of a given soil.
Specific yield (S y) is also a ratio between 0 and 1 (S y ≤ porosity) and indicates the amount of water released due to drainage from lowering the water table in an unconfined aquifer. The value for specific yield is less than the value for porosity because some water will remain in the medium even after drainage due to intermolecular forces.
Water retention curve is the relationship between the water content, θ, and the soil water potential, ψ. The soil moisture curve is characteristic for different types of soil, and is also called the soil moisture characteristic. It is used to predict the soil water storage, water supply to the plants (field capacity) and soil aggregate stability.