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Title: Influence of landscape heterogeneity on water available to tropical forests in an Amazonian catchment and implications for modeling drought response

Journal Article · · Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027066· OSTI ID:1479325
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4]
  1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
  2. Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States)
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alerta de Desastres Naturais, Sao Paulo (Brazil)
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The Amazon basin has experienced periodic droughts in the past, and intense and frequent droughts are predicted in the future. Landscape heterogeneity could play an important role in how tropical forests respond to drought by influencing water available to plants. Using the one-dimensional ACME Land Model and the three-dimensional ParFlow variably saturated flow model, numerical experiments were performed for a catchment in central Amazon to elucidate processes that influence water available for plant use and provide insights for improving Earth system models. Results from ParFlow show that topography has a dominant influence on groundwater table and runoff through lateral flow. Without any representations of lateral processes, ALM simulates very different seasonal variations in groundwater table and runoff compared to ParFlow even if it is able to reproduce the long-term spatial average groundwater table of ParFlow through simple parameter calibration. In the ParFlow simulations, even in the plateau with much deeper water table depth during the dry season in the drought year of 2005, plant transpiration is not water stressed as the soil saturation is still sufficient for the stomata to be fully open based on the empirical wilting formulation in the models. This finding is insensitive to uncertainty in atmospheric forcing and soil parameters, but the empirical wilting formulation is an important factor that should be addressed using observations and modeling of coupled plant hydraulics-soil hydrology processes in future studies. Furthermore, the results could be applicable to other catchments in the Amazon basin with similar seasonal variability and hydrologic regimes.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1479325
Journal Information:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 122, Issue 16; ISSN 2169-897X
Publisher:
American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 17 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (5)

Land use change impacts on European heat and drought: remote land-atmosphere feedbacks mitigated locally by shallow groundwater journal April 2019
Reviews and syntheses: Turning the challenges of partitioning ecosystem evaporation and transpiration into opportunities journal January 2019
Coupling a three-dimensional subsurface flow and transport model with a land surface model to simulate stream–aquifer–land interactions (CP v1.0) journal January 2017
Reviews and syntheses: Turning the challenges of partitioning ecosystem evaporation and transpiration into opportunities text January 2019
Reviews and syntheses: Turning the challenges of partitioning ecosystem evaporation and transpiration into opportunities text January 2019

Figures / Tables (16)

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
landscape heterogeneity
lateral transport of soil moisture
transpiration
seasonal variability of groundwater dynamics and runoff