description
- Climate change is affecting the amount and spatial distribution of precipitation and timings worldwide (Bouwer, 2003; Cosgrove and Loucks, 2015; IPCC, 2021). Climate change is increasing the existing risks and vulnerabilities associated with water disasters, due to changing patterns of some hazards and increased in biodiversity exposure (Vardon 2015; Moftakhari et al. 2017a; 2017b; IPCC, 2014; IPCC, 2021), causing many existing infrastructures to fail. Hence, we have to rethink our design approaches. The question, therefore, is how do we design to meet the increasing pressure of global warming? Natural soil is inherently heterogeneous composed of biotic and abiotic components due to its historical formation process. Most soils are naturally layered consisting of discontinuities in the vertical and horizontal planes, having varying physical, mechanical, chemical and biological properties. These biotic and abiotic properties are affected by external environmental conditions, such precipitation and temperatures changes (Aalto et al. 2019). From engineering perspective, soil is conceptualised soil as multiphase, consisting three phases - solids, water and air. Hence, multiphysics coupling has gained popularity in geotechnical engineering literature (Wantanabe et al., 2009; Keyes, 2012) owing to the multi properties and phases of soils. Scientific challenge is to able to model soil inherent heterogeneity of biotic and abiotic components under the influence of extreme weather conditions needed to understand, design and manage geotechnical infrastructure sustainability. To date most scientific literatures has focused on Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical-Chemical coupling (Simoni, 2008; Wantanabe et al., 2009; Zhou, 2015; Bond et al. 2016; Ogata, et al, 2018; Tao et al, 2019; Zheng et. al, 2019) and little consideration has been given to the interactions between the biotic and abiotic components, in particular, roots-soil, which is an emerging field of biogeotechnics. Hence my work will focus on temperature-water-plant-soil coupling by producing a novel 3-D theoretical model against experimental validation, which will be able to deal with different types of problems of practical interest to engineers. Therefore, the main aim of this research is to develop thermo-hydro-plant-soil coupling model to investigate the inherent heterogeneity of soil and its impact on roots-microbes function on the stability of soils under changing climatic conditions due to global warming. Objectives of this study are: To develop thermo-hydro-mechanical-biotic coupled model for modelling the inherent variability in soil under varying climate conditions and calibrate the model using existing data; To validate the resulting model using wheat growth experimental data from University of Leeds pilot plot Investigate interactions between microbes and soil properties under varying climate conditions To find the relationship between carbon and nutrient applications, microbe populations and plant growth To demonstrate the difference in wheat yields across a range of N availabilities To investigate the influence of plant growth on soil stability (shear strength)