Articles

Monitoring and Comparison of Soil Moisture in Urban and Suburban Area

Expand
  • 1.School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China; 2.School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences, Nanjing University,Nanjing 210093,China

Received date: 2011-09-21

  Revised date: 2011-11-30

  Online published: 2012-02-10

Abstract

Urbanization has  already significantly influenced urban thermal environment. Two monitoring stations were built both in urban and suburban Nanjing. The spatio-temporal characteristics of soil moisture, starting from June 1st, 2009 to June 7th, 2010, under three different land covers (bare soil, grass, concrete) within 1 m depth were studied. The result indicated that soil moisture in urban area was lower than that in suburban area, and revealed an obvious “urban dry island” effect in soil. The corresponding annual average urban dry island intensity (UDII) was approximately -7.4%. The UDII reached its gully and peak value in January and July, respectively, and the monthly average UDII was about -2.1% and -20.5%. In addition, soil moisture in suburban area increased with depth but this tendency is not significant in urban area. Moreover, it was observed that soil moisture under different land covers presented different characteristics. In urban area, daily soil moisture under bare soil cover was more variable than that under grass and concrete covers. The variation ranges of soil moisture under the three covers were all great. The sequences of yearly average soil moisture under the three covers were grass(19.0%)<concrete(26.4%)<bare soil (29.5%) in urban area and concrete(27.4%)<grass(34.7%)<bare soil (36.2%) in suburban area. The fluctuation of soil moisture in urban area is less severe than that in suburban area due to the large area of artificial land covers. The causes of the diversities in soil moisture were discussed and the urban heat island effect is one of the main reasons induce urban dry island effect.

Cite this article

Gu Kai, Shi Bin, Tang Chaosheng, Gao Lei, Jiang Hongtao . Monitoring and Comparison of Soil Moisture in Urban and Suburban Area[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2012 , 27(2) : 185 -193 . DOI: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2012.02.0185

References

[1]Seneviratne S I, Corti T, Davin E L,et al.Investigating soil moisture-climate interactions in a changing climate: A review[J].Earth Science Reviews, 2010, 99:125-161.
[2]Venkatesh B, Lakshman N, Purandara B K,et al. Analysis of observed soil moisture patterns under different land covers in Western Ghats, India[J].Journal of Hydrology, 2011, 397:281-294.
[3]Jackson T J. III Measuring surface soil moisture using passive microwave remote sensing[J]. Hydrological Processes, 1993, 7(2):139-152.
[4]Ruiz-Sinoga J D, Martínez-Murillo J F, Gabarrón-Galeote M A,et al.The effects of soil moisture variability on the vegetation pattern in Mediterranean abandoned fields (Southern Spain)[J].Catena, 2011, 85(1):1-11.
[5]Hodnett M G, Bell J P. Soil moisture investigation of groundwater recharge through black cotton soils in Madhya Pradesh, India[J]. Hydrological Sciences Journal,1986, 31(3): 361-381.
[6]Merz B, Plate E J. An analysis of the effect of spatial variability of soil and soil moisture on runoff[J]. Water Resources Research, 1997, 33(12): 2 909-2 922.
[7]Robinson D A, Jones S B, Wraith J M, et al. A review of advances in dielectric and electrical conductivity measurement in soils using time domain reflectometry[J].Vadose Zone Journal, 2003, 2:444-475.
[8]Topp G C.State of the art of measuring soil water content[J].Hydrological Processes, 2003,17:2 993-2 996.
[9]Qiu Y, Fu B J, Wang J, et al. Soil moisture variation in relation to topography and land use in a hillslope catchment of the Loess Plateau, China[J].Journal of Hydrology, 2001, 240:243-263.
[10]Qiu Y, Fu B J, Wang J, et al. Spatiotemporal prediction of soil moisture content using multiple-linear regression in a small catchment of the Loess Plateau, China[J]. Catena, 2004, 54:173-195.
[11]Longobardi A. Observing soil moisture temporal variability under fluctuating climatic conditions[J]. Hydrology and Earth System Science, 2008,5:935-969.
[12]Delta T. User Manual for the Profile Probe Type PR2 2.0[DB/OL].http:www.delta-t.co.uk/product-support-material.asp, 2011-08-15.
[13]Zeng Y, Qiu X F, Gu L H, et al. The urban heat island in Nanjing[J].Quaternary International, 2009,208:38-43.
[14]Gu Lihua. The Study of Nanjing City Urban Climate Effect[D]. Nanjing: Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, 2008. [顾丽华. 南京市城市气候效应的研究[D].南京:南京信息工程大学,2008.]
[15]Entekhabi D, Eagleson P S. Land surface hydrology parameterization for atmospheric general circulation models including subgrid scale spatial variability[J]. Journal of Climate, 1989,2:816-831.
[16]Famiglietti J S, Wood E F. Multiscale modeling of spatially variable water and energy balance processes[J]. Water Resources Research, 1994, 30:3 601-3 678.
[17]Koster R D, Suarez M J, Ducharne A, et al. A catchment-based approach to modeling land surface processes in a general circulation model. 1. Model structure[J]. Journal of Geophysical Research,2000, 105:24 809-24 822.
[18]Chen X, Hu Q. Groundwater influences on soil moisture and surface evaporation[J].Journal of Hydrology, 2004, 297:285-300.
[19]Tang C S, Shi B, Gao L, et al.Urbanization effect on soil temperature in Nanjing, China[J/OL].Energy and Buildings, doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2011.08.003.

Outlines

/