Can Surface Soil Moisture Information Identify Evapotranspiration Regime Transitions?

Abstract

The transition of evapotranspiration between energy- and water-limitation regimes also denotes a nonlinear change in surface water and energy coupling strength. The regime transitions are primarily dominated by available moisture in the soil, although other micro-meteorological factors also play a role. Remotely sensed soil moisture is frequently used for detecting evapotranspiration regime transitions during inter storm dry downs. However, its sampling depth does not include the entire soil profile, over which water uptake is dominated by plant root distribution. We use flux tower, surface (θs; observations at 5 cm), and vertically integrated in situ soil moisture ((Formula presented.); 0–50 cm) observations to address the question: Can surface soil moisture robustly identify evapotranspiration regime transitions? Results demonstrate that θs and θv are hydraulically linked and have synchronized evapotranspiration regime transitions. As such, θs and θv capture comparable statistics of evapotranspiration regime prevalence, which supports the utility of remote-sensing θs for large-scale land-atmosphere exchange analysis.