Spatio-temporal distribution of soil surface moisture in a heterogeneously farmed Mediterranean catchment

Observation and interpretation of spatial soil surface moisture patterns are fundamental to spatially distributed modelling of runoff generation, soil evaporation, and plant transpiration. Compared to natural basins, man-made managements in farmed basins, such as field limits, agricultural practices and the networks of ditches, Lead to great spatial heterogeneity in hydrological processes at the catchment scale. The aim of this study was to identify the factors controlling the spatio-temporal variability of the surface soil moisture in the farmed Mediterranean catchment of Roujan (0.91 km(2)) located in southern France. Intensive measurements of soil moisture patterns were recorded during two drying sequences, respectively, in dry and wet seasons. Results show that the soil surface characteristics (SSC), which result in part from the agricultural practices such as soil tillage, chemical weed control or grass covering, are the main factors controlling the spatio-temporal distribution of the soil surface moisture during both the wet and dry drying sequences. However, in this study, none of the local factors such as the soil insolation (sunlight reaching soil surface through the plant canopy if there is one), the slope, the aspect and the soil texture is correlated to the soil moisture spatial variability. Only local factors control the spatio-temporal variability of soil surface moisture because agricultural operations like tillage influence greatly the local surface runoff by altering soil hydrologic properties. Also, the ditch networks influence the water transfer from the fields to the catchment outlet by routing runoff directly to the catchment outlet without modifying the soil surface moistures of downslope fields. Consequently, in farmed catchments the agricultural managements and practices strongly modify the spatio-temporal soil moisture distribution and must be taken into account in the understanding and in the modelling of hydrological processes. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.