Partitioning of evaporation into transpiration, soil evaporation and interception: a comparison between isotope measurements and a HYDRUS-1D model

Knowledge of the water fluxes within the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system is crucial to improve water use efficiency in irrigated land. Many studies have tried to quantify these fluxes, but they encountered difficulties in quantifying the relative contribution of evaporation and transpiration. In this study, we compared three different methods to estimate evaporation fluxes during simulated summer conditions in a grass-covered lysimeter in the laboratory. Only two of these methods can be used to partition total evaporation into transpiration, soil evaporation and interception. A water balance calculation (whereby rainfall, soil moisture and percolation were measured) was used for comparison as a benchmark. A HYDRUS-1D model and isotope measurements were used for the partitioning of total evaporation. The isotope mass balance method partitions total evaporation of 3.4 mm d(-1) into 0.4 mm d(-1) for soil evaporation, 0.3 mm d(-1) for interception and 2.6 mm d(-1) for transpiration, while the HYDRUS-1D partitions total evaporation of 3.7 mm d(-1) into 1 mm d(-1) for soil evaporation, 0.3 mm d(-1) for interception and 2.3 mm d(-1) for transpiration. From the comparison, we concluded that the isotope mass balance is better for low temporal resolution analysis than the HYDRUS-1D. On the other hand, HYDRUS-1D is better for high temporal resolution analysis than the isotope mass balance.