Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Peer-reviewed

Soil structure is an important omission in Earth System Models

Simone Fatichi, Dani Or, R. L. Walko, Harry Vereecken, Michael H. Young, Teamrat A. Ghezzehei, Tomislav Hengl, Stefan Kollet, Nurit Agam, Roni Avissar

Nature Communications · 2020

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Summary

Most soil hydraulic information used in Earth System Models (ESMs) is derived from pedo-transfer functions that use easy-to-measure soil attributes to estimate hydraulic parameters. This parameterization relies heavily on soil texture, but overlooks the critical role of soil structure originated by soil biophysical activity. Soil structure omission is pervasive also in sampling and measurement methods used to train pedotransfer functions. Here we show how systematic inclusion of salient soil structural features of biophysical origin affect local and global hydrologic and climatic responses. Locally, including soil structure in models significantly alters infiltration-runoff partitioning and recharge in wet and vegetated regions. Globally, the coarse spatial resolution of ESMs and their ina

Source type
Peer-reviewed study
DOI
10.1038/s41467-020-14411-z
Catalogue ID
SNmokeh74t-znrsfp
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