Prediction of soil water retention properties after stratification by combining texture, bulk density and the type of horizon

Among the numerous pedotransfer functions (PTFs) published, class‐PTfs have received little attention because their accuracy is often considered limited. However, recent studies show that performance of class‐PTFs can be similar to the more popular continuous‐PTFs. In this study, we compare the performance of PTFs that were derived from a set of 456 horizons collected in France grouped by combinations of texture, bulk density and type of horizon (topsoil and subsoil). The performance of these class‐PTFs was validated against water retained at −33 and −1500 kPa. Our results show that the best performance was obtained with class‐PTFs that used both texture and bulk density (texture‐structural class‐PTFs). They also showed that incorporation of horizon type into the PTF did not improve prediction performance. Comparison of performance at −33 and −1500 kPa showed very little difference, thus indicating no bias according to the value of water potential. Finally, the class‐PTFs developed are well suited for predicting water retention properties at the continental and national scales because only very basic soils data are available at these scales. A map of the available water capacity (AWC) was established for France using the 1:1 000 000 Soil Geographical Database of France and an averaged AWC of 104 mm was computed for France.