The impact of soil moisture availability on forest growth indices for variably layered coarse‐textured soils

Abstract

The reestablishment of productive forests over mining waste and overburden is a primary reclamation goal in oil sands mining in Northern Alberta, Canada. Soil water conditions in coarse‐textured soils can be limiting to forest growth. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect that textural variability may have on plant‐available water and concomitant forest productivity on coarse‐textured reclamation soils. The ecophysiological and biogeochemical processes model, Biome‐BGC (Thornton et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 113: 185–222, 2002), was employed to simulate forest dynamics. The water flow sub‐model in Biome‐BGC was replaced by a field‐validated physically based formulation for transient unsaturated water flow. The modified model was assessed using validated physiological parameters, and model predictions were compared with measurements of aboveground biomass dynamics for jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb), white spruce [Picea glauca (Moench) Voss], and trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.). The modified Biome‐BGC model was then used to evaluate the response of leaf area index and net primary production to available water holding capacity on texturally variable, coarse‐textured soils. The results indicate that textural variability could increase the available water holding capacity within a 1‐m profile of coarse‐textured soil by 8 to 16 mm. This enhanced available water holding capacity could increase forest leaf area index by 0·3 to 0·8 and net primary production by 14–30% depending on the specific soil texture and tree species. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Impact of interlayer on moisture characteristics of reclaimed soil backfilled with Yellow River sediments

“…In addition, at the end of the evaporation T3 presented the highest water-holding capacity, had an increase of 64.16% compared to CK2 and was accounted for 80.67% of CK1 (402.31 mm) as the closest one. This is similar to the conclusion obtained by Huang et al [35] . There are two basic controls on water movement in these types of systems: When coarser soil overlies finer soil transient, downward water flow may be restricted by the lower hydraulic conductivity of the underlying finer layer.…”

Efficient Bayesian Inverse Modeling of Water Infiltration in Layered Soils

“…This gap in water content signifies the negative influence of stratified structure on water storage of the sandy layer during infiltration. The higher soil water suction in the substratum soil than the sandy soil layer is the most widely accepted interpretation for the vertical infiltration in semi‐infinite layered soil columns (Huang et al, 2013; Zettl et al, 2011). Meanwhile, fractured capillaries at the layer interface are an obstacle to exhausting air, which will occupy the soil pores to keep out soil water (Cho, 2016).…”

Combining ecohydrologic and transition probability-based modeling to simulate vegetation dynamics in a semi-arid rangeland

“…The landscape is gently rolling in most areas, with red lateritic sandy clay loam soils, and has a mosaic of herbaceous vegetation patches, with 50% bare soil on average, and 5-25% woody canopy cover dominated by Acacia mellifera, A. etbaica, and A. tortilis (King et al, 2012). The herbaceous layer tends to be patchy at the 1 to 10m scale, which are comprised either predominantly of perennial grasses (most commonly in the Cynodon, Digitaria, and Pennisetum genera), or of annual grasses dominated by Eragrostis tenuifolia.…”

“…The two sets of positive feedbacks occurring respectively in vegetated and bare patches, and lateral resource redistribution between them, can generate the hallmark self-organized patchy structure of dryland vegetation (King et al, 2012). These so-called scale-dependent feedbacks can also generate emergent temporal dynamics of nonlinear changes and threshold behaviors in response to incremental changes in environmental conditions such as mean annual precipitation (Rietkerk and van de Koppel, 1997;Turnbull et al, 2012).…”