Desiccation of a soil is basically the removal of water by evaporation, which is controlled by evaporativity and evaporability. Surface evaporation improves the trafficability which is essential for the access of construction equipment in the area reclaimed with soft clay. The existing traditional methods for evaluating evaporation can not account for the deformation of reclaimed soft soils during evaporation. Therefore, a theoretical model for predicting the rate of evaporation from the surface of a deformable material is proposed. The model is based on a system of equations for coupled heat and mass transfer in unsaturated soils. The modified pressure plate extractor test and glass desiccator test were carried out to obtain the soil-water characteristic curve for a deformable soil. The column drying test was conducted to investigate one dimensional water flow, heat flow and evaporation in the surface. A finite difference program was developed to solve the coupled nonlinear partial differential equations, which permit the study of water, vapor and heat flows in the deformable soil. Comparison between measured and simulated values shows a reasonably good matching between the two.