Hydropedology integrates pedology, hydrology, and geomorphology to study interactive pedologic and hydrologic processes and landscape-soil-hydrology relationships across space and time, aiming to understand pedologic controls on hydrologic processes and properties, and hydrologic impacts on soil formation, variability, and functions. Hydropedology emphasizes in situ soils in the landscape, where distinct pedogenic features (such as soil structure, horizonation, and heterogeneity), environmental variables (such as climate, topography, and organisms), and anthropogenic impacts (such as land use and management) interact and determine the landscape water flux. Landscape water flux here encompasses the source, storage, availability, flux, pathway, residence time, and spatio-temporal distribution of water and the transport of chemicals and energy by flowing water in the shallow subsurface.

Hydropedology seeks to answer the following two fundamental questions:

1. How the structure and distribution of the soil over the landscape exert a first control on landscape water flux across scales in the shallow subsurface?
2. How landscape water flux (and associated transport of chemicals and energy by flowing water) impacts soil evolution, variability, and functions?