VIC+ for water‐limited conditions: A study of biological and hydrological processes and their interactions in soil‐plant‐atmosphere continuum

Abstract

[1] The Three-Layer Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC-3L) land surface model is extended to include biological and hydrological processes important to water, energy, and carbon budgets under water-limited climatic conditions: (1) movement of soil water from wet to dry regions through hydraulic redistribution (HR); (2) groundwater dynamics; (3) plant water storage; and (4) photosynthetic process. HR is represented with a process-based scheme and the interaction between HR and groundwater dynamics is explicitly considered. The impact of frozen soil on HR in the cold season is also represented. Transpiration is calculated by combining an Ohm's law analogy, where flow from the soil to leaves is buffered by plant water storage, with the Penman-Monteith method, where stomatal conductance is linked with photosynthesis. In this extended model (referred to as VIC1), water flow in plants and in the unsaturated and saturated zones, transpiration and photosynthesis are closely coupled, and multiple constraints are simultaneously applied to the transpiration process. VIC1 is evaluated with an analytical solution under simple conditions and with observed data at two AmeriFlux sites. Scenario simulations demonstrate the following results: (1) HR has significant impacts on water, energy, and carbon budgets during the dry season; (2) Rise of groundwater table, increase of root depth, HR, and plant water storage are favorable to dry-season latent heat flux; (3) Plant water storage can weaken the intensity of upward HR; (4) Frozen soil can restrict downward HR in the wet winter and reduce the soil water reserves for the dry season.Citation: Luo, X., X. Liang, and H. R. McCarthy (2013), VIC+ for water-limited conditions: A study of biological and hydrological processes and their interactions in soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, Water Resour. Res., 49,

Reliable, robust and realistic: the three R's of next-generation land-surface modelling

“…Lee et al, 2005;Amenu and Kumar, 2008;Wang, 2011;Quijano et al, 2012;Prentice and Cowling, 2013), plant water storage (e.g. Luo et al, 2013), surface water and groundwater interactions (e.g. Winter, 2001;Gutowski et al, 2002;Maxwell and Miller, 2005;Yeh and Eltahir, 2005;Fan et al, 2007;Niu et al, 2007), and the interactions among these processes and with other existing processes in current LSMs (e.g.…”

Detection and attribution of changes in hydrological cycle over the Three-North region of China: Climate change versus afforestation effect

“…Therefore, the sensitivity scenarios designed in this study would induce some degree of bias in quantifying the contribution of LC and climate change to hydrological processes. To remedy this issue, improving the VIC model by coupling dynamic vegetation processes would be favorable for detecting the interaction and feedback between hydrological systems and LC with climate change (Liu et al, , 2013aLuo et al, 2013).…”

Influences of Root Hydraulic Redistribution on N2O Emissions at AmeriFlux Sites

“…There are two primary approaches to HR modeling: the scheme proposed by Ryel et al (2002) (e.g., Fu et al, 2016;Li et al, 2012;Wang, 2011) or its variations (e.g., Lee et al, 2005;Yu & D'Odorico, 2015), and the approach proposed by Amenu and Kumar (2008) (e.g., Luo et al, 2013;Quijano & Kumar, 2015;Tang et al, 2015). Ryel et al's scheme is an empirical method that describes HR flux based on the soil water potential (Wang, 2011;Zheng & Wang, 2007) and CLM4.5 (Fu et al, 2016).…”

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