Spatial variability of soil moisture in a forest catchment: Temporal trend and contributors

Abstract

Understanding the spatio-temporal dynamic of soil moisture is critical in hydrological and other land surface related studies. Until recently, however, there have been controversies about the relationship between spatial mean and spatial variance of soil moisture and the contributions of each of these factors to spatial variability. Therefore, in this study, spatial variability of soil moisture in a 7 km2 forest catchment is analyzed by time-series data on soil moisture obtained at a total of 12 observation sites. Results showed that soil moisture spatial mean and spatial variance varied almost synchronously and in three cyclic patterns during the monitoring period from 1 April 2015 to 31 October 2015. The spatial mean-variance relationship during the ascending and descending periods of spatial mean could be well-fitted by upward and downward convex quadratic curves, respectively, indicating possible clockwise hysteresis of this relationship. It was found that all through the monitoring period, contributions of time-invariant factors on total spatial variance increased from 68.9% to 88.2% with depth, and temporally stable ranking of sites was obtained. Because of the high spatial variation of soil moisture in our study area, it should be noted that a large number of sample plots would be needed to adequately estimate the spatial variability of soil moisture.