Friday April 8 CSL Meeting

Soil Moisture - Watershed Scale vs. Regional Scale
Presenter: Chen Zhao
Time: Friday 8 April, 2:00-3:00
Location: 311 CSA

Abstract: Soil moisture is a fundamental property affecting plant growth, transport and transformation of soil nutrients, water and energy budgets in the soil-plant system. The spatial variation of soil moisture has important implications on all of these processes. The heterogeneity of soil moisture is affected by various environmental factors, such as soil texture, NDVI, total nitrogen, topographical factors like slope and aspect, etc. Previous work focused on watershed scale, revealing the impact of environmental factors on spatial and temporal distribution of soil moisture in a case study watershed in China. Current work is conducting at regional scale, especially in Oklahoma and Colorado state. In this presentation, a comparison between the two scale will be made, expecting to help us better understanding soil moisture heterogeneity at these two scales, and explain how would each environmental factor influence spatial and temporal pattern of soil moisture.

Left: sampling sites distribution at Heihe river watershed, China; right: regression kriging interpolation result at Oklahoma state, 2001.