Soil moisture variability along transects over a well-developed gully in the Loess Plateau, China

Knowledge of soil moisture distributions in gullies, which are highly variable spatially and temporally, is important for both restoring vegetation and controlling erosion in them, but little attention has been paid to this spatio-temporal variability to date. Therefore, we examined soil moisture profiles and their variability along three transects traversing sidewalls of a well-developed gully with steep slopes in a hilly area of the Chinese Loess Plateau. We took intensive measurements at 20-cm intervals from 0 to 160 cm depth, using a portable time domain reflectometer, from September 3 to October 20 2009 and from April 5 to July 20 2010. The results indicate that the mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation of moisture content vary with time, their responses to precipitation vary at different depths, and moisture content is most variable when mean values are moderate (15–20%). Revised fitting functions developed and introduced by Famiglietti et al. (2008) captured with confidence the relationship between spatial variability (SD and CV) and spatial mean of moisture content (RMSE ranging from 0.0015 to 0.0293). Soil moisture clearly varied along the transects, the vertical distribution of soil moisture differed in different seasons, and correlation analysis showed that soil texture influenced the variability of surface soil moisture more strongly than terrain attributes (except during distinct rainfall events, when this pattern reversed). The results presented here should improve understanding of spatio-temporal variations in soil moisture profiles in well-developed gullies in the Loess Plateau, and potentially elsewhere.

► Soil moisture is of high variability both in space and time over gullies.
► Revised fitting function capture the relationship between mean moisture content and SD well.
► Downslope moisture is of high spatial variability. Vertical moisture exhibits seasonal patterns.
► Soil moisture shows negligible relations to terrain indices but strong relations to soil texture.