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Explaining soil moisture variability as a function of mean soil moisture: A stochastic unsaturated flow perspective
Author(s) -
Vereecken H.,
Kamai T.,
Harter T.,
Kasteel R.,
Hopmans J.,
Vanderborght J.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2007gl031813
Subject(s) - water content , soil science , standard deviation , soil water , environmental science , spatial variability , moisture , pedotransfer function , hydrology (agriculture) , mathematics , geology , hydraulic conductivity , statistics , geotechnical engineering , geography , meteorology
Understanding soil moisture variability and its relationship with water content at various scales is a key issue in hydrological research. In this paper we predict this relationship by stochastic analysis of the unsaturated Brooks‐Corey flow in heterogeneous soils. Using sensitivity analysis, we show that parameters of the moisture retention characteristic and their spatial variability determine to a large extent the shape of the soil moisture variance‐mean water content function. We demonstrate that soil hydraulic properties and their variability can be inversely estimated from spatially distributed measurements of soil moisture content. Predicting this relationship for eleven textural classes we found that the standard deviation of soil moisture peaked between 0.17 and 0.23 for most textural classes. It was found that the β parameter, which describes the pore‐size distribution of soils, controls the maximum value of the soil moisture standard deviation.