Solute and sediment transport at laboratory and field scale: Contributions of J.-Y. Parlange

We explore selected aspects of J.-Y. Parlange’s contributions to hydrological transport of solutes and sediments, including both the laboratory and field scales. At the laboratory scale, he provided numerous approximations for solute transport accounting for effects of boundary conditions, linear and nonlinear reactions, and means to determine relevant parameters. Theory was extended to the field scale with, on the one hand, the effect of varying surface boundary conditions and, on the other, effects of soil structure heterogeneity. Soil erosion modeling, focusing on the Hairsine-Rose model, was considered in several papers. His main results, which provide highly usable approximations for grain-size class dependent sediment transport and deposition, are described. The connection between solute in the soil and that in overland flow was also investigated by Parlange. His theory on exchange of solutes between these two compartments, and subsequent movement, is presented. Both deterministic and stochastic approaches were considered, with application to microbial transport. Beyond contaminant transport, Parlange’s fundamental contributions to the movement of solutes in hypersaline natural environments provided accurate predictions of vapor and liquid movement in desert, agricultural, and anthropogenic fresh-saline interfaces in porous media, providing the foundation for this area of research.