TY - JOUR
T1 - Soil structure is an important omission in Earth System Models
AU - Fatichi, Simone
AU - Or, Dani
AU - Walko, Robert
AU - Vereecken, Harry
AU - Young, Michael H.
AU - Ghezzehei, Teamrat A.
AU - Hengl, Tomislav
AU - Kollet, Stefan
AU - Agam, Nurit
AU - Avissar, Roni
N1 - Funding Information:
S.F. acknowledges the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the ETH Zurich Foundation (grant ETH-29 14-2). The PIs of the FLUXNET community, the manipulation experiments, and the long-term research sites that acquired and shared data used to run T&C model simulations are deeply acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
PY - 2020/12/1
Y1 - 2020/12/1
N2 - Most soil hydraulic information used in Earth System Models (ESMs) is derived from pedo-transfer functions that use easy-to-measure soil attributes to estimate hydraulic parameters. This parameterization relies heavily on soil texture, but overlooks the critical role of soil structure originated by soil biophysical activity. Soil structure omission is pervasive also in sampling and measurement methods used to train pedotransfer functions. Here we show how systematic inclusion of salient soil structural features of biophysical origin affect local and global hydrologic and climatic responses. Locally, including soil structure in models significantly alters infiltration-runoff partitioning and recharge in wet and vegetated regions. Globally, the coarse spatial resolution of ESMs and their inability to simulate intense and short rainfall events mask effects of soil structure on surface fluxes and climate. Results suggest that although soil structure affects local hydrologic response, its implications on global-scale climate remains elusive in current ESMs.
AB - Most soil hydraulic information used in Earth System Models (ESMs) is derived from pedo-transfer functions that use easy-to-measure soil attributes to estimate hydraulic parameters. This parameterization relies heavily on soil texture, but overlooks the critical role of soil structure originated by soil biophysical activity. Soil structure omission is pervasive also in sampling and measurement methods used to train pedotransfer functions. Here we show how systematic inclusion of salient soil structural features of biophysical origin affect local and global hydrologic and climatic responses. Locally, including soil structure in models significantly alters infiltration-runoff partitioning and recharge in wet and vegetated regions. Globally, the coarse spatial resolution of ESMs and their inability to simulate intense and short rainfall events mask effects of soil structure on surface fluxes and climate. Results suggest that although soil structure affects local hydrologic response, its implications on global-scale climate remains elusive in current ESMs.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85078352268&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-020-14411-z
DO - 10.1038/s41467-020-14411-z
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85078352268
VL - 11
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 522
ER -