Numerical study of the effect of soil-plant-atmosphere interaction under future climate projections and different vegetation covers
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Maddah Sadatieh, Maryam Sadat
Tsiampousi, Aikaterini
Paschalis, Athanasios
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Soil-plant-atmosphere interaction (SPAI) plays a significant role on the safety and serviceably of geotechnical infrastructure. The mechanical and hydraulic soil behaviour varies with the soil water content and pore water pressures (PWP), which are in turn affected by vegetation and weather conditions. Focusing on the hydraulic reinforcement that extraction of water through the plant roots offers, this study couples advances in ecohydrological modelling with advances in geotechnical modelling, overcoming previous crude assumptions around the application of climatic effects on the geotechnical analysis. A methodology for incorporating realistic ecohydrological effects in the geotechnical analysis is developed and validated, and applied in the case study of a cut slope in Newbury, UK, for which field monitoring data is available, to demonstrate its successful applicability in boundary value problems. The results demonstrate the positive effect of vegetation on the infrastructure by increasing the Factor of Safety. Finally, the effect of climate change and changes in slope vegetation cover are investigated. The analysis results demonstrate that slope behaviour depends on complex interactions between the climate and the soil hydraulic properties and cannot be solely anticipated based on climate data, but suctions and changes in suction need necessarily to be considered.
Date Issued
2025-09-01
Date Acceptance
2025-06-03
Citation
Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment, 2025, 43
ISSN
2352-3808
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment
Volume
43
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
10.1016/j.gete.2025.100697
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
100697
Date Publish Online
2025-06-04