A Simplified Approach for Determining Hydrologic Behavior and Depth of Soils at Basin Scale

Abstract

Land-surface models at basin scale usually employ various combinations of land-use and soil class data to parameterize the major hydrologic processes. Even though soil exerts a major influence on hydrologic processes, soil hydraulic behavior is still difficult to quantify at relatively large scales. Recently soil hydraulic parameterization for hydrologic modeling can be conveniently carried out using pedotransfer rules, which are based on the knowledge of basic soil physical and chemical variables, such as bulk density, textural composition, and organic matter content. However, the availability of this basic information can be rather limited over large land areas. Therefore, in this work we explore the feasibility of employing morphological features to retrieve basic soil data being then used in pedotransfer functions (PTFs), as well as soil depth being viewed here as an indicator of the lower boundary condition. The proposed approach is applied in the Agri River basin (approximately 1770 km2), in Southern Italy (Basilicata Region), where we assessed relationships among soil depth and texture with morphological attributes, such as elevation, slope gradient, slope orientation (aspect), and surface curvature. Climatic conditions were defined using mean annual rainfall and climatic indices. The results show an enhanced correlation between soil depth and slope when accounting for the local vegetation types. As expected, texture can be conveniently linked to parent material obtained from lithology. We show an application of the method to derive soil parameters from morphological and vegetation coverage data (DEM, Corine Land Cover, etc.), which are actually available for almost all national basins

Field test of a multi-frequency electromagnetic induction sensor for soil moisture monitoring in southern Italy test sites

“…Additional information about land cover features and hydraulic properties characteristics of the soils in the Fiumarella catchment are available elsewhere (Santini et al, 1999;Romano and Palladino, 2002;Fiorentino et al 2006;Carriero et al, 2007). …”

Soil depth modelling using terrain analysis and satellite imagery: the case study of Qeshlaq mountainous watershed (Kurdistan, Iran)

“…This shows that the importance of vegetation in forecasting soil depth in the study area, which has also been reported by previous researchers (Tesfa et al, 2009;Gastaldi et al, 2012;Seid et al, 2013). Carriero et al (2005) showed that there was a fairly good correlation between soil depth and slope gradient, wetness index and mean annual precipitation for the study basin. They showed that this correlation can be improved, if information about vegetation characteristics is added.…”

On the use of AMSU-based products for the description of soil water content at basin scale

“…Catchment pedology was investigated through field campaigns and laboratory measurements aimed at identifying the main soilland units of the basin. These data were reported in the land cover map elaborated by Santini et al (1999) that was there after used by Carriero et al (2007) to define the soil hydraulic properties of each unit. Such an analysis was used in the rainfall-runoff application that requires accurate information about the spatial variability of soils (Romano and Santini, 1997;Romano and Palladino, 2002).…”