Abstract
Anumber of methodological issues concerning the use of group-theoretical methods in soil physics are considered. The relationship between the choice of space-time geometry for the phenomena studied and the physical laws governing these phenomena is analyzed. The dependence between the choice of quantitative standards of physical quantities and invariance of the laws describing the relationship between these quantities is considered as a particular case. Procedures of generalizing traditional symmetries are demonstrated by several examples. In particular, the principle of superposition of similarity symmetries is formulated for the theoretical description of the soil moisture characteristic (SMC) and thermophysical coefficients of soils; it is shown that soil temperature conditions can be mathematically modeled without solving the heat conduction equation. It is noted that symmetry analysis provides a deeper understanding of the structural-functional concept of the physical properties of soil. The problems considered are illustrated by particular equations.
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Original Russian Text © A.V. Chichulin, 2010, published in Sibirskii Ekologicheskii Zhurnal, 2010, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 389–398.
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Chichulin, A.V. Spatial-temporal symmetries of physical phenomena in soil. Contemp. Probl. Ecol. 3, 272–278 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1995425510030033
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1995425510030033