Published in Science China Earth Sciences
In the arid inland river basins of northwestern China, human activities control almost all the surface hydrologic processes. The potential effects of these altered hydrologic processes are gradually becoming clear, especially since the 2000 implementation of the integrated water resources management projects in the Shiyang River, the Heihe River, t...
In recent ecohydrological modelling, a common basis has been found in methodology and axiomas, such as the minimalist, systems analysis approach and a piecewise linear root zone water loss function. In this paper, we consider the loss function for root zones in contact with ground water through capillary upflow and including deep root systems. The ...
We analyze the combined effects of the spatial variability of soil hydraulic properties and the water uptake by plant roots on unsaturated water flow. For this analysis, we use a simplified macroscopic root water uptake model which is usually applied only for homogeneous or layered soil and therefore we also determine whether it is applicable for m...
Groundwater can be a source of both water and salts in semiarid areas, and therefore, capillary pressure–induced upward water flow may cause root zone salinization. To identify which conditions result in hazardous salt concentrations in the root zone, we combined the mass balance equations for salt and water, further assuming a Poisson-distributed ...
Groundwater uptake can play a major role in the survival of vegetation in semiarid areas, but this has not yet been included in an earlier developed ecohydrological stochastic framework. In this paper we provide a piecewise linear equation which includes capillary fluxes from shallow groundwater in the loss function of the ecohydrological stochasti...
We present a coupling between the one-dimensional Richards equation for vertical unsaturated flow and the one-dimensional hillslope-storage Boussinesq equation (HSB) for lateral saturated flow along complex hillslopes. Here the capillary fringe is included in the flow domain as an integral part of the Boussinesq aquifer. The coupling allows quantit...
