Groundwater is often the only source to meet the increasing water demands in arid regions, therefore the accurate quantification of the unsaturated zone water fluxes there is essential for the estimation of groundwater recharge. This thesis aims to improve our ability to model these fluxes by testing the physical-mathematical properties of many of the available parameterizations of the soil water retention curve and improving them where necessary and based on that carrying out a simulation study of coupled liquid water, water vapor, and heat flows in a 100 m bare soil profile under arid/hyper-arid conditions to clarify the potential role of water vapor flow and the way the atmospheric input signal travels downward through the vadose zone for two soil hydraulic parameterizations suitable for dry conditions. This study points to the importance of carefully considering the soil hydraulic parameterizations to be used for long-term water balance studies that aim to determine or predict the variation of seasonal water availability to plants or long-term groundwater recharge to assess the sustainability of extractions from an underlying aquifer. |