Responses of soil water dynamics to precipitation events in an alpine meadow ecosystem of the Qinghai Lake Basin based on high‐precision lysimeter measurements

Abstract

In high-altitude cold areas, how precipitation and freeze-thaw processes affect soil water dynamics is not well understood due to a lack of high real-time resolution measurements. This study measured soil water balance components with a high-precision lysimeter in an alpine meadow ecosystem in the Qinghai Lake watershed from June 30, 2020, to June 30, 2021. The results showed that the total precipitation (TP), evapotranspiration (ET), soil water storage change (ΔS) and the vertical water flow (WF) of this ecosystem were 705.18, 633.21, 72.58 and À0.60 mm, respectively, dur-