Turning a problem into a solution : heterogeneities in soil hydrology It is commonly recognized that soil moisture exhibits spatial heterogeneities occurring in a wide range of scales. These heterogeneities are caused by different factors ranging from soil structure at the plot scale to land use at the landscape scale. There is an urgent need for effi cient approaches to deal with soil moisture heterogeneity at large scales where manage ment decisions are usually made. The aim of this dissertation was to test innovative ap proaches for making efficient use of standard soil hydrological data in order to assess seep age rates and main controls on observed hydrological behavior including the role of soil het erogeneities. As a first step the applicability of a simplified Buckingham Darcy method to estimate deep seepage fluxes from point information of soil moisture dynamics was assessed. This was done in a numerical experiment considering a broad range of soil textures and textural het erogeneities. The method performed well for most soil texture classes. However in pure sand where seepage fluxes were ...