Root-soil-water hydrological interaction and its impact on slope stability

ABSTRACTVegetation is known to provide mechanical reinforcement and hydrological influences on soils, thus affecting the soil shear strength and the stability of rooted soil slopes. Professor Tien H. Wu pioneered the research on the root mechanical reinforcement effect. This study focuses on hydrological influences of vegetation. Factors including species-specific genetic features and soil conditions that control the transpiration process are often varying, leading to significant uncertainty in the transpiration process. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of the uncertainty of the maximum transpiration rate Etp on the pore-water pressure distributions in and the stability of a vegetated slope. Random field theory is applied to model the spatial variation of Etp, which maintains constant along the vertical direction by its definition but varies along the slope surface. A modified Richards equation governing water flow in unsaturated media is employed to incorporate a sink t...