Stochastic modelling of soil moisture dynamics in a grassland of Qilian Mountain at point scale

Stochastic modeling of soil moisture dynamics is crucial to the quantitative understanding of plant responses to water stresses,hydrological control of nutrient cycling processes,water competition among plants,and some other ecological dynamics,and thus has become a hotspot in ecohydrology at present.In this paper,we based on the continuously monitored data of soil moisture during 2002―2005 and daily precipitation date of 1992―2006,and tried to make a probabilistic analysis of soil moisture dynamics at point scale in a grassland of Qilian Mountain by integrating the stochastic model improved by Laio and the Monte Carlo method.The results show that the inter-annual variations for the soil moisture patterns at different depths are very significant,and that the coefficient of variance(CV) of surface soil moisture(20 cm) is almost continually kept at about 0.23 whether in the rich or poor rainy years.Interestingly,it has been found that the maximal CV of soil moisture has not always appeared at the surface layer.Comparison of the analytically derived soil moisture probability density function(PDF) with the statistical distribution of the observed soil moisture data suggests that the stochastic model can reasonably describe and predict the soil moisture dynamics of the grassland in Qilian Mountain at point scale.By extracting the statistical information of the historical precipitation data in 1994―2006,and inputting them into the stochastic model,we analytically derived the long-term soil moisture PDF without considering the inter-annual climate fluctuations,and then numerically derived the one when considering the inter-annual fluctuation effects in combination with a Monte-Carlo procedure.It was found that,though the peak position of the probability density distribution significantly moved towards drought when considering the disturbance forces,and its width was narrowed,accordingly its peak value was increased,no significant bimodality was observed in the soil moisture dynamics under the given intensity of random fluctuation disturbance.

Stochastic modelling of soil moisture dynamics in a grassland of Qilian Mountain at point scale

Stochastic modeling of soil moisture dynamics is crucial to the quantitative understanding of plant responses to water stresses, hydrological control of nutrient cycling processes, water competition among plants, and some other ecological dynamics, and thus has become a hotspot in ecohydrology at present. In this paper, we based on the continuously monitored data of soil moisture during 2002–2005 and daily precipitation date of 1992–2006, and tried to make a probabilistic analysis of soil moisture dynamics at point scale in a grassland of Qilian Mountain by integrating the stochastic model improved by Laio and the Monte Carlo method. The results show that the inter-annual variations for the soil moisture patterns at different depths are very significant, and that the coefficient of variance (CV) of surface soil moisture (20 cm) is almost continually kept at about 0.23 whether in the rich or poor rainy years. Interestingly, it has been found that the maximal CV of soil moisture has not always appeared at the surface layer. Comparison of the analytically derived soil moisture probability density function (PDF) with the statistical distribution of the observed soil moisture data suggests that the stochastic model can reasonably describe and predict the soil moisture dynamics of the grassland in Qilian Mountain at point scale. By extracting the statistical information of the historical precipitation data in 1994–2006, and inputting them into the stochastic model, we analytically derived the long-term soil moisture PDF without considering the inter-annual climate fluctuations, and then numerically derived the one when considering the inter-annual fluctuation effects in combination with a Monte-Carlo procedure. It was found that, though the peak position of the probability density distribution significantly moved towards drought when considering the disturbance forces, and its width was narrowed, accordingly its peak value was increased, no significant bimodality was observed in the soil moisture dynamics under the given intensity of random fluctuation disturbance. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40601007) and Subsidy Funds of Personnel Training of the National Fundamental Fund Project (Grant No. J0630966)