Across the U.S., there are two common approaches to determine how large a soil treatment area, or STA, should be: soil morphology evaluations, and/or percolation or a similar hydraulic test.
The general trend and recommendation has been to move to soil morphology since it provides a more complete picture of what is going on in undisturbed soil. In disturbed soils, hydraulic testing (as done in a percolation test) can provide insight into the level of damage to the natural soil structure.Both methods, if performed properly, can predict how water will move through the soil. A summary of each, along with applications, is
