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Soil water is vital for sustaining semiarid ecosystems. However, data on soil moisture have unlikely been continuously collected for a long time (e.g., >50 years), let alone under various combinations of climates and livestock grazing intensities. The objective of this study was to formulate and parameterize an ecohydrological model for predicting long-termvariability of soil moisture, taking a typical Eurasian grassland located in northeast China as the testbed. The parameters were determined by extensive literature review, field reconnaissance, laboratory analyses of soil and grass samples, and model calibration using daily soil temperatures and soil moistures measured at four depths from 2014 to 2017. The model, driven by the daily climate data from 1955 to 2017, performed well in reproducing the measurements. Across the assessment years of 1960 to 2017, the daily soil moistures were predicted to vary from 0.02 to 0.38. Overall, the soil moistures at a shallower depth were smaller but had a wider range than those at a deeper depth, with a largest mean and a widest range around the 30 cm depth. Regardless of the depths, the soil moistures pulsed in beginning March and plateaued from May to September. Livestock grazing was precited to reduce top 1.5-cm soil moistures but increase moistures of the beneath soils. The optimal grazing intensity was determined to be around 3.0 cattle ha−1, above which wind erosion would become a concern. The grazing impacts on soil moisture were found to monophonically decrease with increase of evapotranspiration or annual precipitation of larger than 220mm. For the years with an annual precipitation of less than 220mm, such grazing impacts either increased or decreased with increase of precipitation, depending on the relative magnitude of evapotranspiration. Climate change will diminish soil moisture pulses in early spring, likely intensifying soil erosion by wind.
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Measuring and Modeling Bare Topsoil Erosion by Wind from a Steppe Grassland of China
Soil erosion by wind has been found to be negatively related to soil water content, as evidenced by that for a given area, such a soil erosion can be much less in a wet than a dry year. However, few studies have examined the functional relationship between wind erosion and soil moisture, primarily due to lack of field measured data. The objectives of this study were to: 1) measure wind erosion in field using a portable wind tunnel devised and made by the authors; and 2) use the measured data to calibrate/validate a wind erosion model previously developed by the authors. The study was conducted in the steppe grassland within the Balaguer watershed located in north China. As part of a larger project funded by National Science Foundation, this study focused on soil conditions with a minimal vegetation coverage to understand the functional relationship between wind erosion, soil moisture, and climate. These conditions are similar with those when the grassland degrades and ultimately becomes deserted. Field samples were analyzed in laboratory to determine the soil characteristics (e.g., moisture content, texture, hydraulic conductivity, and organic content). In this conference, we will present our portable wind tunnel, measured data, and the wind erosion model and its predictions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1654957
- PAR ID:
- 10085159
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- AGU Fall Meeting 2018
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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