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The Soils Database provides a collection of basic soils and artificial materials used to construct soil profiles. You do not access items from this table in your simulations directly, but you link through the soil profiles.

Defines if the soil material is a Natural soil or an Artificial material. The main difference between the two is that natural soils allow the exchange of water inside the soil layers and - if used at the surface- allow natural transpiration. The thermal properties are calculated dynamically based on the actual water content of the soil. In addition, Water Body is supported as a special material to include still water bodies of substantial depth. Note: If “Water Body” is chosen, all other parameters are not required as the physical properties of water are fixed in ENVI-met.

The water content settings define the amount of liquid water per cube meter at three different critical threshold points:

• at saturation: the (theoretical) maximum amount of water inside the soil when each air pore is filled with water. In practise, this amount can only be reached if the soil cannot drain water to lower soil layers and is completely watered.
• at field capacity: this is the maximum amount of liquid water the soil can hold against gravity without loosing water through drainage. Not every pore of the soil matrix is filled with water
• at wilting point: the wilting point is the lowest threshold defined for a drying soil. This is the minimum water content required so that plant roots can extract water out of the soil. If the soil water content is lower than the wilting point value, it still contains water, but this cannot be used by the plants for transpiration.

• Type of Material:
  defines if the soil material is a Natural soil or an Artificial material. The main difference between the two is that natural soils allow the exchange of water inside the soil layers and - if used at the surface- allow natural transpiration. The thermal properties are calculated dynamically based on the actual water content of the soil. In addition, Water Body is supported as a special material to include still water bodies of substantial depth. Note: If “Water Body” is chosen, all other parameters are not required as the physical properties of water are fixed in ENVI-met.