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| Titel |
Climate controls how ecosystems size the root zone storage capacity at catchment scale |
| VerfasserIn |
Hongkai Gao, Markus Hrachowitz, Stan Schymanski, Fabrizio Fenicia, Nutchanart Sriwongsitanon, Hubert Savenije |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2015
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 17 (2015) |
| Datensatznummer |
250106277
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2015-5941.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The root zone moisture storage capacity (SR) of terrestrial ecosystems is a buffer providing
vegetation continuous access to water and a critical factor controlling land-atmospheric
moisture exchange, hydrological response and biogeochemical processes. However, it is
impossible to observe directly at catchment scale. Here, using data from 300 diverse
catchments, it was tested that, treating the root zone as a reservoir, the mass curve technique
(MCT), an engineering method for reservoir design, can be used to estimate catchment-scale
SR from effective rainfall and plant transpiration. Supporting the initial hypothesis, it
was found that MCT-derived SR coincided with model-derived estimates. These
estimates of parameter SR can be used to constrain hydrological, climate and land
surface models. Further, the study provides evidence that ecosystems dynamically
design their root systems to bridge droughts with return periods of 10-40 years,
controlled by climate and linked to aridity index, inter-storm duration, seasonality
and runoff ratio. This adaptation of ecosystems to climate could be explored for
prediction in ungauged basins. We found that implementing the MCT-derived SR
without recalibration has dramatically increased hydrological model transferability. |
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