Abstract:To explore the effect of soil structure on soil infiltration, the water movement characteristics of Yunnan red loam under the condition of freshwater drip irrigation was assessed by the comparison of the indoor and outdoor experiments, in which single and double point source drip irrigation with three drip discharges (2.68, 3.74, 4.68 L/h) was arranged. The soil bulk density was 1.2 g/cm3. The specifically analyzed characteristics of wetting front and wetting body under a certain drip discharge between undisturbed and disturbed soils would reveal the regional soil moisture migration rule, which provided reference basis for regional crop irrigation. The results showed that: (1) The wetting front transport rate of undisturbed soil was faster, and the earth’s surface wetting proportion of undisturbed soil increased faster than that of disturbed soil with the change of intersection time, which indicated that migration velocity of wetting front was related to soil porosity; (2) Under the same observation time, the wet body of undisturbed soil changed more quickly, and the wet body flat rate of undisturbed soil (16.53%) was greater than that of disturbed soil (45%); (3) The moisture content contour of undisturbed and disturbed soil had the same change trend, but did not overlap, while the degree of density differed; (4) The fractal dimension of undisturbed soil was less than that of disturbed soil, which indicated that the soil pore distribution of undisturbed soil differed, while the texture of disturbed soil was relatively uniform. The results revealed the soil moisture migration characteristics of undisturbed and disturbed Yunnan red loam, and provided reference for further mechanism research.