I'm happy to share that my new MOOC, SOIL – The Hydrology of Soil, is now live on the University of Trento's MOOC platform. It's free, open, and self-paced, and it's aimed at anyone who wants to properly understand how water moves through unsaturated soil — not just as a set of formulas to memorize, but as a coherent chain of physical reasoning.
What the course is about
The course covers the hydrology of unsaturated soils and builds up, step by step, the mathematical tools needed to describe water flow through them — culminating in the Richards equation, the cornerstone of unsaturated flow theory.
It's organized into five chapters, each combining short video episodes, further readings, hands-on activities, and self-assessment quizzes:
- What is Soil — the basic quantities used to describe water content and structure in soil.
- The Energy of Water in Soil — how water's energy is distributed, capillary pressure, and the construction of soil-water retention curves.
- Darcy and Buckingham's Laws — from Darcy's law in saturated soil to Buckingham's extension for unsaturated conditions, and how hydraulic conductivity is derived.
- Soil Water Budget — the mass budget, conservation laws, and the derivation of Richards' equation itself (plus its groundwater counterpart).
- Solving Richards' Equation and Its Limits — pedotransfer functions, numerical solution strategies, macropores, and where the classical theory breaks down.
What you'll be able to do by the end
By the end of the course, you should be able to explain the physical meaning of the water retention curve and the Richards equation and the reasoning that connects them, solve simple unsaturated flow problems by choosing the right constitutive relationships, and critically evaluate when the Richards-equation framework is — and isn't — a valid description of what's happening in real soil.
Who it's for
If you work in hydrology, agronomy, environmental engineering, or soil science — or you're a student who wants to go beyond a black-box use of Richards' equation — this course is built for you. The course can be seen as an introduction to the theory of the WHETGEO model. WHETGEO provides an open source tool for solving 1D and 2D Richards equation.
Try it
The course is free to enroll: mooc.unitn.it/course/view.php?id=32
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