Soil Water Balance and Vegetation Dynamics in a Semi-arid Mediterranean Ecosystem

Vegetation dynamics and soil water balance in a water-limited Mediterranean ecosystem on Sardinia, Italy

Papers published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions are under open-access review for the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Abstract Mediterranean ecosystems are commonly heterogeneous savanna-like ecosystems, with contrasting plant functional types (PFTs, e.g., grass and woody vegetation) competing for the water use. Mediterranean ecosystems are also commonly character...

Analysis of soil and vegetation patterns in semi-arid Mediterranean landscapes by way of a conceptual water balance model

1 Istituto di Ricerca Sulle Acque, sede di Bari, via De Blasio, 5, 70123, Bari, Italy 2 Dipartimento di Ingegneria delle Acque e Chimica, Politecnico di Bari, 70125, Bari, Italy 3 Centre for Water Research, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia * now at: Departments of Geography and Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 220 Davenp...

Vegetation–soil water interaction within a dynamical ecosystem model of grassland in semi-arid areas

A dynamical ecosystem model with three variables, living biomass, wilted biomass and available soil wetness, is developed to examine the vegetation–soil water interaction in semi-arid areas. The governing equations are based on the mass conservation law. The physical and biophysical processes are formulated with the parameters estimated from observational data. Both numerical results and qualit...

Soil water regime and water concervation efficiency in a non-irrigated semi-arid environment

Recharge estimation and soil moisture dynamics in a Mediterranean, semi-arid karst region

Knowledge of soil moisture dynamics in the unsaturated soil zone provides valuable information on the temporal and spatial variability of groundwater recharge. This is especially true for the Mediterranean region, where a substantial fraction of long-term groundwater recharge is expected to occur during high magnitude precipitation events of aboveaverage wet winters. To elucidate process unders...