  This work concerns linearization methods for efficiently solving the
Richards` equation,a degenerate elliptic-parabolic equation which models flow
in saturated/unsaturated porous media.The discretization of Richards` equation
is based on backward Euler in time and Galerkin finite el-ements in space. The
most valuable linearization schemes for Richards` equation, i.e. the
Newtonmethod, the Picard method, the Picard/Newton method and theLscheme are
presented and theirperformance is comparatively studied. The convergence, the
computational time and the conditionnumbers for the underlying linear systems
are recorded. The convergence of theLscheme is theo-retically proved and the
convergence of the other methods is discussed. A new scheme is
proposed,theLscheme/Newton method which is more robust and quadratically
convergent. The linearizationmethods are tested on illustrative numerical
examples.
