The soil moisturec haracteristimc ay be modeleda s a power curvec ombinedw ith a shortp arabolic
sectionn ear saturationt o represengt raduala ir entry. This two-part functionmtogethewr ith a power
functionr elatings oil moisturea nd hydraulicc onductivitymisu sedt o derivea formula for the wetting
front suctionr equiredb y the Green-Ampte quation.R epresentativpe arametersfo r the moisturec haracteristic,
the wetting front suction, and the sorptivity, a parameter in the infiltration equation derived by
Philip (1957), are computedb y usingt he desorptiond ata of Holtan et al. (1968). Averagev alueso f the
parameters, and associateds tandard deviations,a re calculated for 11 soil textural classesT. he resultso f
this study indicate that the exponento f the moisturec haracteristicp ower curve can be predicted
reasonablyw ell from soil texture and that gradual air entry may have a considerablee ffecto n a soil's
wetting front suction.