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A signature-based approach to quantify soil moisture dynamics under contrasting land-uses
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  • Ryoko Araki,
  • Flora Branger,
  • Inge Wiekenkamp,
  • Hilary McMillan
Ryoko Araki
San Diego State University

Corresponding Author:raraki8159@sdsu.edu

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Flora Branger
Irstea Centre de Lyon-Villeurbanne
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Inge Wiekenkamp
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam German Research Centre for Geosciences
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Hilary McMillan
San Diego State University
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Abstract

Soil moisture signatures provide a promising solution to overcome the difficulty of evaluating soil moisture dynamics in hydrologic models. Soil moisture signatures are metrics that quantify the dynamic aspects of soil moisture timeseries and enable process-based model evaluations. To date, soil moisture signatures have been tested only under limited land-use types. In this study, we explore soil moisture signatures’ ability to discriminate different dynamics among contrasting land-uses. We applied a set of nine soil moisture signatures to datasets from six in-situ soil moisture networks worldwide. The dataset covered a range of land-use types, including forested and deforested areas, shallow groundwater areas, wetlands, urban areas, grazed areas, and cropland areas. Our set of signatures characterized soil moisture dynamics at three temporal scales: event, season, and a complete timeseries. Statistical assessment of extracted signatures showed that (1) event-based signatures can distinguish different dynamics for all the land-uses, (2) season-based signatures can distinguish different dynamics for some types of land-uses (deforested vs. forested, urban vs. greenspace, and cropped vs. grazed vs. grassland contrasts), (3) timeseries-based signatures can distinguish different dynamics for some types of land-uses (deforested vs. forested, urban vs. greenspace, shallow vs. deep groundwater, wetland vs. non-wetland, and cropped vs. grazed vs. grassland contrasts). Further, we compared signature-based process interpretations against literature knowledge; event-based and timeseries-based signatures generally matched well with previous process understandings from literature, but season-based signatures did not. This study will be a useful guideline for understanding how catchment-scale soil moisture dynamics in various land-uses can be described using a standardized set of hydrologically relevant metrics.
04 Jun 2021Submitted to Hydrological Processes
18 Jun 2021Submission Checks Completed
18 Jun 2021Assigned to Editor
22 Jun 2021Reviewer(s) Assigned
21 Sep 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
01 Oct 2021Editorial Decision: Revise Major
15 Nov 20211st Revision Received
16 Nov 2021Submission Checks Completed
16 Nov 2021Assigned to Editor
16 Nov 2021Reviewer(s) Assigned
10 Mar 2022Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
10 Mar 2022Editorial Decision: Accept
Apr 2022Published in Hydrological Processes volume 36 issue 4. 10.1002/hyp.14553