ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a numerical procedure to estimate, at a test site, the hydraulic properties and the net rainfall flux across the ground surface, by modelling the suction regime observed by tensiometers. The numerical procedure adopts an inverse analysis to model the observed suction regime and highlights the role played by the heterogeneity of the soil and by the net flux across the ground surface on the unsaturated flow characteristics at the slope scale. In natural and man-made slopes, soil suction is certainly one of the most important physical variables governing the transfer of energy and water between the atmosphere and the soil through the slope surface. In many natural slopes, modelling the soil suction regime may be a quite difficult task, especially when the hydraulic properties of the soils forming the slopes are strongly heterogeneous. The assumed initial suction distribution was given by a steady-state analysis in which the boundary conditions refer to the first available monitoring data.
