Biological soil crusts (BSCs, or biocrusts) have important positive ecological functions such as erosion control and soil fertility improvement, and they may also have negative effects on soil moisture in some cases. Simultaneous discussions of the two-sided impacts of BSCs are key to the rational use of this resource. This study focused on the contribution of BSCs while combining with specific...

Climate change poses significant threats to biodiversity, but some species may be able to escape its effects in small locations with unusual and stable climates (microrefugia). However, there are still great uncertainties about where microrefugia are located, and the exact role that moisture plays in buffering extreme temperatures. In this study we quantified the effects of moisture on the dist...

the relationship between topography, land use, and topsoil moisture storage is investigated for a small catchment with undulating deep loess hilslopes in the south of the netherlands. for a period of 10 months, soil moisture profiles have been measured weekly at 15 locations throughout the catchment. a generalized additive model was employed to find relationships between the various factors inf...

[1] Characterization of the space-time variability of soil moisture is important for land surface and climate studies. Here we develop an analytical model to investigate how, at the dry-end of the soil moisture range, the main characteristics of the soil moisture field (spatial mean and variability, steady state distribution) depend on the intermittent character of low intensity rain storms. Ou...

A sea-breeze event in south-west Western Australia is simulated using the Regional Atmospheric Modelling System (RAMS) version 6.0. The model is evaluated against high resolution soundings as well as station observations and is shown to reproduce the qualitative features of the sea-breeze well. Sensitivity tests are carried out to investigate the effects of historical land-cover change and chan...

In situ measurements of soil moisture are invaluable for calibrating and validating land surface models and satellite-based soil moisture retrievals. In addition, longterm time series of in situ soil moisture measurements themselves can reveal trends in the water cycle related to climate or land cover change. Nevertheless, on a worldwide basis the number of meteorological networks and stations ...

[1] Soil moisture is the environmental variable synthesizing the effect of climate, soil, and vegetation on the dynamics of water-limited ecosystems. Unlike abiotic factors (e.g., soil texture and rainfall regime), the control exerted by vegetation composition and structure on soil moisture variability remains poorly understood. A number of field studies in dryland landscapes have found higher ...

Ecosystem susceptibility to invasion by nonnative species is poorly understood, but evidence is increasing that spatial and temporal variability in resources has large-scale effects. We conducted a study in Artemisia tridentata ecosystems at two Great Basin locations examining differences in resource availability and invasibility of Bromus tectorum over elevation gradients and in response to di...