by the soil depth from which water can evaporate or be taken up by plant roots. It can be equal to the rootzone. The root zone can be saturated, unsaturated, or partly saturated, depending on the water balance. All water movements in this zone are vertical, either upward or downward, depending on the water balance. (In a future version of Saltmod, the upper soil reservoir may be divided into two equal parts to detect the trend in the vertical salinity distribution.) The transition zone can also be saturated, unsaturated or partly saturated. All flows in this zone are vertical, except the flow to subsurface drains. If a horizontal subsurface drainage system is present, this must be placed in the transition zone, which is then divided into two parts: an upper transition zone (above drain level) and a lower transition zone (below drain level). If one wishes to distinguish an upper and lower part of the transition zone in the absence of a subsurface drainage system, one may specify in the input data a drainage system with zero intensity. The aquifer has mainly horizontal flow. Pumped wells, if present, receive their water from the aquifer only. Water balances The water balances are calculated for each reservoir separately as shown in the article Hydrology (agriculture). The excess water leaving one reservoir is converted into incoming water for the next reservoir. The three soil reservoirs can be assigned a different thickness and storage coefficients, to be given as input data. In a particular situation, the transition zone or the aquifer need not be present. Then, it must be given a minimum thickness of 0.1 m. The depth of the water table, calculated from the water balances, is assumed to be the same for the whole area. If this assumption is not acceptable, the area must be divided into separate units. Under certain conditions, the height of the water table influences the water balance components. For example, a rise of the water table towards the soil surface may lead to an increase of evaporation, surface runoff, and subsurface drainage, or a decrease of percolation losses from canals. This, in turn, leads to a change of the water balance, which again influences the height of the water table, etc. This chain of reactions is one of the reasons why Saltmod has been developed into a computer program. It takes a number of repeated calculations (iterations)