- Title
- The imprint of coevolving semi-arid landscapes, soil, and vegetation on soil moisture and vegetation variability
- Creator
- Srivastava, Ankur; Yetemen, Omer; Rodriguez, Jose F.; Kumari, Nikul; Saco, Patricia M.
- Relation
- ARC.FT140100610 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT140100610 & DP140104178 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP140104178
- Relation
- Catena Vol. 242, Issue July 2024, no. 108125
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2024.108125
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- Landscapes evolve through nonlinear interactions between soil, vegetation, and climate. In semi-arid ecosystems, soil moisture variability (SMV) and vegetation variability (VV) can be strongly related to landscape organisation induced by differences in insolation on opposing north-facing slopes (NFS) and south-facing slopes (SFS). Due to its complex interactions with various processes and factors, soil moisture and vegetation exhibit significant variability in both space and time. In this study, the Channel-Hillslope Integrated Landscape Development (CHILD) landscape evolution model (LEM), coupled to a dynamic vegetation model (BGM) and equipped with a spatially distributed solar radiation component is used. The model is used to investigate the implications of various soil, climatic, and geomorphic factors on SMV and VV over landscapes with different characteristics. The analysis of model results indicates that SMV and VV are more sensitive to changes in geomorphic (hillslope diffusion and uplift rate) and climate (solar radiation, precipitation) factors than to soil hydrologic factors (anisotropy, porosity, infiltration capacity, root depth, and pore size distribution) considered in this study. Spatial variability increases with decreases in hillslope diffusion, and with increases in uplift rates and latitude, while temporal variability has the same response to those factors, and also increases with precipitation. All of these factors contribute to larger difference in condition on NFS and SFS, which ultimately is reflected in SMV and VV. Slope-area, soil moisture-area, and vegetation-area relationships revealed that the difference in SMV and VV between NFS and SFS is more pronounced for smaller contributing areas, where NFS are steeper than SFS. They also show that the temporal variability of soil moisture and vegetation is less in SFS than in NFS.
- Subject
- landscape evolution; soil moisture variability; vegetation variability; aspect-driven insolation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1505988
- Identifier
- uon:55799
- Identifier
- ISSN:0341-8162
- Rights
- x
- Language
- eng
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