Catchment-scale variability of absolute versus temporal anomaly soil moisture: Time-invariant part not always plays the leading role

- Absolute soil moisture has greater spatial variability than temporal anomalies.
- Time-invariant component dominates the total variance.
- Seasonality in contribution can be attributed into difference in wetness conditions.
- The upward-convex relation of variance and mean is mainly characterized by covariance.
- Time stability of ASM reflects little time-invariant pattern for the precision metric.

SummaryRecently, the characterization of soil moisture spatiotemporal variability is recommended to consider temporal soil moisture anomalies because of their distinctive behaviors with absolute soil moisture and their importance in hydrological applications. Here we characterized soil moisture spatiotemporal variability in the Yuanzegou catchment (0.58 km2) on the Loess Plateau of China, considering both absolute soil moisture and temporal anomalies. The dataset contained soil moisture observations in the 0-80 cm between 2009 and 2011 at 78 sampling locations. The spatial variance of time-invariant temporal means was shown to be the primary contributor (61.7-76.2%) to the total variance but the magnitude of this contribution was much lower than observed in large-scale studies. The seasonal variation in contribution can be attributed into differences in soil wetness conditions; lower contribution was found at intermediate wetness for spatial variances of temporal mean and temporal anomalies. Furthermore, the upward-convex relationship between spatial variance and spatial means of absolute soil moisture was mainly characterized by the covariance of temporal mean and temporal anomalies. Time stability of absolute soil moisture and its components were analyzed by using both the “accuracy” metric mean relative difference (MRD) and the “precision” metric variance of relative difference (VRD). As MRD was considered, time stability of absolute soil moisture primarily characterized time-invariant patterns. However, as VRD was used, the time stability of absolute soil moisture characterized only a small part of time-invariant or -variant pattern.