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Spatio-temporal variability in remotely sensed surface soil moisture and its relationship with precipitation and evapotranspiration during the growing season in the Loess Plateau, China

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Abstract

The distribution and variability of surface soil moisture at regional scales is still poorly understood in the Loess Plateau of China. Spatial and temporal dynamics of surface soil moisture is important due to its impact on vegetation growth and its potential feedback to atmospheric and hydrologic processes. In this study, we analyzed surface soil moisture dynamics and the impacts of precipitation and evapotranspiration on surface soil moisture using remote sensing data during the growing season in 2011 for the Loess Plateau, which contain surface soil moisture, precipitation, vegetation index and evapotranspiration. Results indicate that the areas with low surface soil moisture are mainly located in the semi-arid region. Under dry surface soil moisture, evapotranspiration temporal persistence has a higher positive correlation (0.537) with surface soil moisture temporal persistence, and evapotranspiration is very sensitive to surface soil moisture. But under wet surface soil moisture regime, surface soil moisture temporal persistence has a higher negative correlation (−0.621) with evapotranspiration temporal persistence. Correlation of surface soil moisture and monthly precipitation, evapotranspiration and vegetation index illustrated that precipitation was a significant factor influencing surface soil moisture spatial variance. The correlation coefficients between monthly surface soil moisture and precipitation was varied in different climatic regions, which was 0.304 in arid, 0.364 in semi-arid, 0.490 in transitional and 0.300 in semi-humid regions. Surface soil moisture is more sensitive to precipitation, evapotranspiration, in transitional regions between dry and wet climates.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Gansu Province (No.1208RJYA063) and the “12th Five-Year Plan” national science and technology support program “The ecological restoration technology integration and experiment demonstration of degraded forests—the grassland in Loess hilly area” (No. 2011BAC07B04). The authors are grateful to the reviews for their helpful comments and suggestions to improve this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xiaoying Li

  2. Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xiaoying Li & Zhenghu Duan

  3. Shaanxi Provincial Meteorological Bureau, Xi’an, 710014, China

    Na Wang

  4. College of Resource and Environmental Science, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Lichen Liu

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  1. Xiaoying Li
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Correspondence to Xiaoying Li.

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Li, X., Liu, L., Duan, Z. et al. Spatio-temporal variability in remotely sensed surface soil moisture and its relationship with precipitation and evapotranspiration during the growing season in the Loess Plateau, China. Environ Earth Sci 71, 1809–1820 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-013-2585-7

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