pedon: A Python package for analyzing unsaturated soil hydraulic properties
pedon: A Python package for analyzing unsaturated soil hydraulic properties - Published in JOSS (2026)
Science Score: 87.0%
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○CITATION.cff file
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○.zenodo.json file
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✓DOI references
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Published in Journal of Open Source Software
Repository
A Python package for analyzing unsaturated soil hydraulic properties
Basic Info
- Host: GitHub
- Owner: martinvonk
- License: mit
- Language: Python
- Default Branch: main
- Homepage: https://martinvonk.github.io/pedon/
- Size: 17.1 MB
Statistics
- Stars: 14
- Watchers: 3
- Forks: 2
- Open Issues: 6
- Releases: 13
Metadata Files
README.md
pedon
pedon (from Greek: πέδον, pedon -> soil) is a Python package for working with unsaturated soil hydraulic properties. It provides an object-oriented framework for soils, soil samples, and soil hydraulic models, making it easy to describe, analyze, and parameterize soil water retention and hydraulic conductivity behavior. At its core, pedon treats each soil model as a Python class that defines a soil water retention curve and an unsaturated hydraulic conductivity function. The package currently includes implementations of several widely used models:
- Mualem-Van Genuchten
- Brooks-Corey
- Fredlund & Xing
- Haverkamp
- Gardner
- Rucker
- Kosugi
- Campbell
- Panday (MODFLOW USG-Transport)
pedon allows these models to be evaluated directly and fitted to data. When laboratory measurements of soil water retention and/or unsaturated hydraulic conductivity are available, model parameters can be estimated by fitting analytical curves to the data using nonlinear least squares, following the same methodology as the widely used RETC.
To support parameterization without direct measurements, pedon includes access to several established soil hydraulic parameter datasets:
- HYDRUS
- VS2D
- Staring Series: 2001 and 2018
- Clapp & Hornberger (1978)
In addition, pedon implements multiple pedotransfer functions that estimate soil hydraulic parameters from easily measured soil properties:
- Van Genuchten: Wösten
- Van Genuchten: Staring Series
- Van Genuchten: Rosetta v1, 2 & 3 (Schaap et al. 2001)
- Van Genuchten: Vereecken
- Van Genuchten: Weynants
- Van Genuchten: Tóth
- Van Genuchten: Hodnett & Tomasella
- Brooks-Corey: Cosby (see also Cooper et al. 2021)
- Brooks-Corey: Saxton
- van Genuchten: HYPAGS (Peche et al. 2024; Peche & Houben 2023)
By combining soil hydraulic models, reference datasets, pedotransfer functions, and fitting routines in a single, consistent framework, pedon makes it straightforward to move from soil information—whether coarse texture data or detailed laboratory measurements—to parameterized soil models ready for use in variably saturated flow simulations.
If you use this software in your research or analyses, please cite the package via its Zenodo archive:
Vonk, M. A. & Peche, A. (XXXX).
pedon: A Python package for analyzing unsaturated soil hydraulic properties (vX.X.X). Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18222514.
Installation
To get the latest stable version install using:
pip install pedon
To get the development version download the GitHub code to your computer. Use cd to get to the download directory and install using:
pip install -e .
Documentation
The documentation for pedon is available at https://martinvonk.github.io/pedon/. It includes an extensive user guide with Jupyter Notebooks as examples and an API reference.
Owner
- Name: Martin Vonk
- Login: martinvonk
- Kind: user
- Location: Netherlands
- Company: @tudelft, @ArtesiaWater
- Repositories: 7
- Profile: https://github.com/martinvonk
JOSS Publication
pedon: A Python package for analyzing unsaturated soil hydraulic properties
Authors
Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, South Holland, The Netherlands, Artesia B.V., Schoonhoven, South Holland, The Netherlands
Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany
Editor
Jayaram Hariharan
Tags
hydrology unsaturated zone vadose zone groundwater modeling soil hydraulic propertiesGitHub Events
Total
- Release event: 2
- Delete event: 6
- Member event: 1
- Pull request event: 13
- Fork event: 2
- Issues event: 5
- Watch event: 5
- Issue comment event: 10
- Push event: 155
- Pull request review event: 5
- Pull request review comment event: 8
- Create event: 11
Last Year
- Release event: 1
- Delete event: 6
- Member event: 1
- Pull request event: 11
- Issues event: 4
- Watch event: 2
- Issue comment event: 10
- Push event: 144
- Pull request review event: 5
- Pull request review comment event: 8
- Create event: 10
Committers
Last synced: 6 months ago
Top Committers
| Name | Commits | |
|---|---|---|
| Martin Vonk | v****t@g****m | 190 |
| Aaron Peche | a****e@b****e | 1 |
Committer Domains (Top 20 + Academic)
Issues and Pull Requests
Last synced: about 1 month ago
All Time
- Total issues: 3
- Total pull requests: 13
- Average time to close issues: N/A
- Average time to close pull requests: 1 day
- Total issue authors: 3
- Total pull request authors: 1
- Average comments per issue: 0.67
- Average comments per pull request: 0.0
- Merged pull requests: 10
- Bot issues: 0
- Bot pull requests: 0
Past Year
- Issues: 2
- Pull requests: 1
- Average time to close issues: N/A
- Average time to close pull requests: 33 minutes
- Issue authors: 2
- Pull request authors: 1
- Average comments per issue: 1.0
- Average comments per pull request: 0.0
- Merged pull requests: 1
- Bot issues: 0
- Bot pull requests: 0
Top Authors
Issue Authors
- APeche (1)
- OnnoEbbens (1)
- martinvonk (1)
Pull Request Authors
- martinvonk (13)
Top Labels
Issue Labels
Pull Request Labels
Packages
- Total packages: 1
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Total downloads:
- pypi 295 last-month
- Total dependent packages: 0
- Total dependent repositories: 0
- Total versions: 12
- Total maintainers: 1
pypi.org: pedon
Python package for (unsaturated) soil properties including pedotransfer functions
- Documentation: https://pedon.readthedocs.io/
- License: MIT License
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Latest release: 0.1.0
published 16 days ago