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Application of Diurnal Soil Water Dynamics in Determining Effective Precipitation

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Coupled Dynamics in Soil

Part of the book series: Springer Theses ((Springer Theses))

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Abstract

Located in western Inner Mongolia, the Badain Jaran Desert is the second largest desert in China and consists of a regular series of stable megadunes, among which over 70 permanent lakes exist. The unexpected lakes in desert attracted research interests in exploring the hydrological process in this particular landscape. However, only a little literature exists on the diurnal and spatial variation of the drying front in this area, which is the main issue in the desert hydrological process to characterize the movement of water in soil. In order to understand the drying front in the Badain Jaran Desert, a field campaign was conducted by the observations of soil physical parameters and micrometeorological parameters. With the field data, the performance of a vadose zone soil water balance model, the HYDRUS1D, was calibrated. Then, the HYDRUS1D was used to produce the spatial and temporal information of coupled water, water vapor and heat transport in sand to characterize the variation pattern of the drying front before, during and after the rainfall. The deepest drying front was applied to determine the effective infiltration, which is defined as the amount of soil water captured by the sand beneath the deepest drying front by infiltrated water of an incident rainfall event.

This chapter is based: Zeng, Y., Z. Su, L. Wan, Z. Yang, T. Zhang, H. Tian, X. Shi, X. Wang, and W. Cao, (2009), Diurnal pattern of the drying front in desert and its application for determining the effective infiltration, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 13: 703–714.

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  1. University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE, Twente, The Netherlands

    Yijian Zeng

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Zeng, Y. (2013). Application of Diurnal Soil Water Dynamics in Determining Effective Precipitation. In: Coupled Dynamics in Soil. Springer Theses. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34073-4_3

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