Estimating soil moisture storage change using quasi-terrestrial water balance method

Juana Paul Moiwo, Fulu Tao and Wenxi Lu

Agricultural Water Management, 2011, vol. 102, issue 1, 25-34

Abstract: Soil moisture is a critical consideration for agriculture and hydrology especially in semi-arid regions. Like groundwater, soil moisture measurements may not always available in sufficient distributions for effective monitoring of agricultural operations. This paper presents a quasi-terrestrial water balance method, driven by common hydro-climatic data, to estimate soil moisture. The method is tested for the ≈152000km2 floodplain region of Hai River Basin using 48 consecutive months (January 2003–December 2006) of data. Comparisons of the estimated and field-measured soil moisture storage and storage change show favorable agreements at monthly, seasonal yearly cycles. This suggests that the proposed method reliably detects soil moisture storage signal in the tested region. The analysis shows a narrowing soil moisture storage change in the study area. Further analysis indicates that the narrowing in soil moisture storage change is sustained by groundwater storage loss via irrigation. There is also storage loss to the atmosphere via irrigation-driven evapotranspiration. Apparently, storage gain occurs in summer while storage loss occurs in winter. However, an overall storage loss exists in the tested floodplain region of Hai River Basin.

Keywords: Soil moisture; Groundwater; Precipitation; Evapotranspiration; Quasi-terrestrial water balance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377411002678
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:102:y:2011:i:1:p:25-34

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2011.10.003

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().