The movement of water into and through soils in the unsaturated state is basic to many water resources problems including rainfall-runoff models, ground water recharge, irrigation, drainage, evapotranspiration and the movement of pollutants in soils. This study was conducted in an effort to determine if the flow equation based on Darcy\u27s Law and the continuity equation could be used to describe watershed infiltration and thus be incorporated into hydrologic models.
The results of the study indicate that even on apparently uniform soils there is a great deal of variability in soil water properties. Handling this variability plus the difficulty of solving the flow equation led to the conclusion that a simpler approach to modelling watershed infiltration is needed.
A simple infiltration model was developed and included in a rainfall-runoff model. Tests with the model indicate that it produces satisfactory estimates of monthly runoff from small, rural watersheds
