[1] An important factor controlling catchment-scale water balance is the seasonal variation of climate. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the seasonal distributions of water and energy, and their interactions with the soil moisture store, on mean annual water balance in Australia at catchment scales using a stochastic model of soil moisture balance with seasonally varying fo...

Water penetration in many California orchards and vinyards is a serious management problem. Chemical properties of soils related to their aggregate stability and crust strength were measured to determine if one or more properties could be used to predict crusting. None of the measured properties, including aggregate stability, texture, organic matter, and various forms of iron, aluminum, or sil...

Urban areas typically have a high degree of impervious surfaces— that is, roads, parking lots, rooftops, and other surfaces that impede the movement of water into the soil. In predevelopment areas with natural ground cover, over half of precipitation infiltrates the soil to replenish groundwater tables, and only a small amount (10%) remains as runoff into stormwater systems, rivers, and lakes. ...

Existing continuum models of multiphase flow in porous media are unable to explain why preferential flow (fingering) occurs during infiltration into homogeneous, dry soil. Following a phase-field methodology, we propose a continuum model that accounts for an apparent surface tension at the wetting front and does not introduce new independent parameters. The model reproduces the observed feature...

Plant rooting depth affects ecosystem resilience to environmental stress such as drought. Deep roots connect deep soil/groundwater to the atmosphere, thus influencing the hydrologic cycle and climate. Deep roots enhance bedrock weathering, thus regulating the long-term carbon cycle. However, we know little about how deep roots go and why. Here, we present a global synthesis of 2,200 root observ...

Accumulation of beef cattle manure on feedlot pen surfaces generates large amounts of dissolved solutes that can be mobilized by water fluxes, affecting surface and groundwater quality. Our objective was to examine the long-term impacts of a beef cattle feeding operation on water fluxes and manure leaching in feedlot pens located on sandy loam soils of the subhumid Sandy Pampa region in Argenti...

Nutrient concentrations and loads in streamflow are sensitive to rapidly changing stream chemistry and discharge during storms. Mechanistic models that can simulate water and solute movement at hillslope scales could be useful for predicting concentration-discharge (C-Q) patterns and thereby improve our quantitative understanding of terrestrial-aquatic linkages for targeted catchment management...

Shallow landslides on steep (>25) hillsides along Puget Sound have resulted in occasional loss of life and costly damage to property during intense or prolonged rainfall. As part of a larger project to assess landslide hazards in the Seattle area, the U.S. Geological Survey instrumented two coastal bluff sites in 2001 to observe the subsurface hydrologic response to rainfall. The instrumentatio...

Concentrates on estimating the spatial correlations between soil water infiltration observations, with special emphasis on resistant methods to remove nonstationarity. After this removal, robust semivariogram estimators are used to examine the spatial dependencies for various tillage treatments. There is some indication that infiltration characteristics inherit different types of spatial depend...