The Impact of Soil Tension on Isotope Fractionation, Transport, and Interpretations of the Root Water Uptake Origin

Abstract

The new isotope module in HYDRUS‐1D can be used to infer the origin of root water uptake (RWU), a suitable dynamic indicator for agriculture and forest water management. However, evidence shows that the equilibrium fractionation between liquid water and water vapor within the soil is affected not only by soil temperature but also by soil tension. How soil tension affects isotope transport modeling and interpretations of the RWU origin is still unknown. In this study, we evaluated three fractionation scenarios on model performance for a field dataset from Langeoog Island: i) no fractionation (Non_Frac), ii) the soil temperature control on equilibrium fractionation as described by the standard Craig‐Gordon equation (CG_Frac), and iii) CG_Frac plus the soil tension control on equilibrium fractionation (CGT_Frac). The model simulations showed that CGT_Frac led to more depleted surface isotopic compositions than CG_Frac.The vertical origin of RWU was estimated using the water balance calculations (WB) and the Bayesian mixing model (SIAR). While the former directly used water flow outputs, the latter used as input simulated isotopic compositions (using different fractionation scenarios) of RWU and soil water. Both methods provided similar variation trends with time and depth in different soil layers’ contributions to RWU. The contributions of all soil layers interpreted by the CGT_Frac scenario were always between Non_Frac and CG_Frac. The temporal origin of RWU was deduced from particle tracking (PT, releasing one hypothetical particle for individual precipitation event and tracking its movement based on the water balance between particles) and a virtual tracer experiment (VTE, assigning a known isotope composition to individual precipitation event and tracking its movement based on the cumulative isotope flux). Both methods revealed similar variation trends with time in drainage and root zone (RZ) travel times. The interpreted drainage and RZ travel times were generally ranked as Non_Frac > CGT_Frac > CG_Frac. Overall, the factors considered in the standard CG equation dominated isotope fractionation, transport, and interpretations of the RWU origin. Isotope transport‐based methods (SIAR, VTE) were more computationally demanding than water flow‐based methods (WB, PT).This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Developments and applications of the HYDRUS computer software packages since 2016

“…(2021), who considered the dependence of evaporation fractionation on environmental factors, such as atmosphere temperature and relative humidity, using the Craig and Gordon (1965) and Gonfiantini (1986) models. The resulting formulation has been used successfully in multiple applications (e.g., Post et al., 2022; Zhou et al., 2022, 2023). For example, Post et al.…”

“…The Isotope module was further modified by Zhou et al (2021), who considered the dependence of evaporation fractionation on environmental factors, such as atmosphere temperature and relative humidity, using the Craig and Gordon (1965) and Gonfiantini (1986) models. The resulting formulation has been used successfully in multiple applications (e.g., Post et al, 2022;Zhou et al, 2022Zhou et al, , 2023. For example, Post et al (2022) used the code to estimate groundwater recharge rates using soil water isotope profiles in two contrasting dune types on Langeoog Island in Germany.…”