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 characterized by strong inter-annual rainfall variability, which influences the distributions of PFTs 5 that vary spatially and temporally. With the objective to investigate interactions between vegetation dynamics, soil water budget and land-surface fluxes in a water-limited ecosystem, an extensive field campaign in a Mediterranean setting was performed. Also a vegetation dynamic model (VDM) is coupled to a 3-component (bare soil, grass and woody vegetation) Land surface model (LSM). The case study is in Orroli, situated 10 in the mid-west of Sardegna within the Flumendosa river basin. The landscape is a mixture of Mediterranean patchy vegetation types: trees, including wild olives and cork oaks, different shrubs and herbaceous species. Land surface fluxes, soil moisture and vegetation growth were monitored during the May 2003–June 2006 period. Interestingly , hydrometeorological conditions of the monitored years strongly differ, with dry 15 and wet years in turn, such that a wide range of hydrometeorological conditions can be analyzed. The coupled VDM-LSM model is successfully tested for the case study, demonstrating high model performance for the wide range of eco-hydrologic conditions. The use of the VDM in the LSM is demonstrated to be essential when studying the climate-soil-vegetation interactions of these water-limited ecosystems. Results 20 demonstrate also that vegetation dynamics are strongly influenced by the inter-annual variability of atmospheric forcing, with grass leaf area index changing significantly each spring season according to seasonal rainfall amount.