Soil moisture observation and changing pattern in the mountainous catchment of Southern China

Abstract:

Soil moisture is an important hydrological index in catchment hydrological processes, and is also a very important hydrological index governing the catchment hydrological processes, but there are seldom long and continue observations to catchment soil moisture. In this study, the soil moistures in several watersheds in the mountain area of Southern China have been observed continuously. The results show that the water table is this area is relatively low, and the soil moisture content is rather high for most the year, which implies the runoff coefficient is high in this area. The results also show that the soil moisture content alone the slope changes slightly, also changes insignificantly among different slopes. Another finding is that the soil moistures change rapidly during the storm, and get saturated quickly and even for a medium storm, the soil could be filled up. The collected data will be used for further studies such as developing equations for calculating soil movement, runoff production and hydrological model parameter estimation.