Reply to Comment by Jakobi et al. (2020) on Soil Texture Often Exerts a Stronger Influence Than Precipitation on Mesoscale Soil Moisture Patterns

We appreciate the constructive comment by Jakobi et al. (2020), and we confirm the calculation mistakes which they discovered. In the corrected dataset, volumetric water content was more strongly correlated with sand content than with antecedent precipitation index (API) for 12 out of the 18 transect dates. For one of the dates when the API correlation was of larger magnitude than the sand content correlation, the API correlation was negative, which is physically illogical. The average correlation coefficient between volumetric water content and sand content was -0.48 across all transect dates. In contrast, the average correlation coefficient between the volumetric water content and API was only 0.25, approximately one-half the magnitude of the sand content correlation. The spatial influence of precipitation on soil water content patterns is less stable and more complex compared to that of soil texture. We stand by the claim in our paper's title, Soil Texture Often Exerts a Stronger Influence Than Precipitation on Mesoscale Soil Moisture Patterns.

Automated summary

The authors acknowledge and correct the calculation mistakes pointed out by Jakobi et al. They found that soil texture often exerts a stronger influence on soil moisture patterns than precipitation, as demonstrated by the correlation coefficients between volumetric water content, sand content, and antecedent precipitation index.