HESSHydrology and Earth System SciencesHESSHydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.1607-7938Copernicus PublicationsGöttingen, Germany10.5194/hess-22-3229-2018Probabilistic inference of ecohydrological parameters using observations from point to satellite scalesProbabilistic inference of ecohydrological parametersBassiouniMaoyabassioum@oregonstate.eduhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5795-9894HigginsChad W.StillChristopher J.https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8295-4494GoodStephen P.https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4363-1577Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USACollege of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USAMaoya Bassiouni (bassioum@oregonstate.edu)8June20182263229324316November201729November201726April201816May2018This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is available from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/22/3229/2018/hess-22-3229-2018.htmlThe full text article is available as a PDF file from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/22/3229/2018/hess-22-3229-2018.pdf
Vegetation controls on soil moisture dynamics are challenging to measure and
translate into scale- and site-specific ecohydrological parameters for simple
soil water balance models. We hypothesize that empirical probability density
functions (pdfs) of relative soil moisture or soil saturation encode
sufficient information to determine these ecohydrological parameters.
Further, these parameters can be estimated through inverse modeling of the
analytical equation for soil saturation pdfs, derived from the commonly used
stochastic soil water balance framework. We developed a generalizable
Bayesian inference framework to estimate ecohydrological parameters
consistent with empirical soil saturation pdfs derived from observations at
point, footprint, and satellite scales. We applied the inference method to
four sites with different land cover and climate assuming (i) an annual
rainfall pattern and (ii) a wet season rainfall pattern with a dry season of
negligible rainfall. The Nash–Sutcliffe efficiencies of the analytical
model's fit to soil observations ranged from 0.89 to 0.99. The coefficient of
variation of posterior parameter distributions ranged from < 1 to 15 %.
The parameter identifiability was not significantly improved in the more
complex seasonal model; however, small differences in parameter values
indicate that the annual model may have absorbed dry season dynamics.
Parameter estimates were most constrained for scales and locations at which
soil water dynamics are more sensitive to the fitted ecohydrological
parameters of interest. In these cases, model inversion converged more slowly
but ultimately provided better goodness of fit and lower uncertainty. Results
were robust using as few as 100 daily observations randomly sampled from the
full records, demonstrating the advantage of analyzing soil saturation pdfs
instead of time series to estimate ecohydrological parameters from sparse
records. Our work combines modeling and empirical approaches in ecohydrology
and provides a simple framework to obtain scale- and site-specific analytical
descriptions of soil moisture dynamics consistent with soil moisture
observations.
Introduction
The movement of water from soils, through plants, and back to the atmosphere
via transpiration is a critical component of local and global hydrologic
cycles and is the largest surface-to-atmosphere water pathway (Good et al.,
2015). A realistic analytical description of soil moisture dynamics is key to
understanding ecohydrological processes that regulate the productivity of
natural and managed ecosystems. Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. (1999) introduced a
simple framework using a bucket model of soil-column hydrology forced with
stochastic precipitation inputs where soil water losses are only a function
of relative soil moisture or soil saturation. Given this ecohydrological
framework, the analytical equation for the probability density function (pdf)
of soil saturation depends on simple abiotic characteristics such as average
climate and soil texture, and biotic characteristics including soil
saturation thresholds at which vegetation can influence soil water losses.
However, the shapes of analytical soil saturation pdfs are generally not
consistent with observations when literature values for model parameters are
used (Miller et al., 2007). Some parameters such as field capacity and
wilting point do not correspond to conventional definitions, because of
simplifications made to describe soil water loss processes in the model, and
need to be calibrated (Dralle and Thomspon, 2016). To our knowledge,
parameters of the analytical soil saturation pdfs have not been directly
calibrated to empirical pdfs derived from measurements beyond the point
scale. Observation networks provide freely available point-scale, spatially
integrated soil moisture observations, while remotely sensed soil moisture
observations are available through satellite products. These data sources
create an opportunity to (i) evaluate whether analytical soil saturation pdfs
are consistent with observations across a range of scales, and (ii) determine
average ecohydrological parameters relevant to each scale.
Estimates of ecohydrological parameters are used in a large range of
applications for which the stochastic soil water balance framework has been
used and adapted, including the effects of climate, soil, and vegetation on
soil moisture dynamics (Laio et al., 2001a; Rodriguez-Iturbe et al., 2001;
Porporato et al., 2004); ecohydrological factors driving spatial and
structural characteristics of vegetation (Caylor et al., 2006;
Manfreda et al., 2017); soil salinization dynamics (Suweis et al.,
2010); biological soil crusts (Whitney et al., 2017); vegetation stress;
optimum plant water use strategies and plant hydraulic failure (Laio et al.,
2001b; Manzoni et al., 2014; Feng et al., 2017); vertical root distributions
(Laio et al., 2006); plant pathogen risk (Thomspon et al., 2013); streamflow
persistence in seasonally dry landscapes (Dralle et al., 2016); and soil
water balance partitioning (Good et al., 2014, 2017). A survey of nearly
400 ecohydrology publications revealed that 40 % of studies relied heavily
on simulation, rarely integrated empirical measurements, and were almost
never coupled with experimental studies, suggesting a critical need to
combine modeling and empirical approaches in ecohydrology (King and Caylor,
2011). Only a few studies have directly confronted the governing equations of
the stochastic soil water balance model with observed soil moisture data, and
even fewer studies have attempted to optimize model parameters to best fit
soil moisture observations. Miller et al. (2007) calibrated soil saturation
pdfs to project vegetation stress in a changing climate. Dralle and
Thompson (2016) developed an analytical expression for annually integrated
soil saturation pdfs under seasonal climates and then calibrated soil
saturation thresholds between which evapotranspiration is maximum and zero to
compare the model to soil moisture observations at a savanna site. Chen et
al. (2008) related evapotranspiration observations at the stand scale to soil
moisture values using a Bayesian inversion approach, and Volo et al. (2014)
calibrated the soil moisture loss curve to investigate effects of irrigation
scheduling and precipitation on soil moisture dynamics and plant stress. The
functional form of the soil moisture losses was approximated using
conditionally averaged precipitation (Salvucci, 2001; Saleem and Salvucci,
2002) and remotely sensed data (Tuttle and Salvucci, 2014). The timescale of
soil moisture dry-downs, derived from the soil moisture loss equations, was
parameterized using evapotranspiration measured at micro-meteorological
stations (Teuling et al., 2006) and space-borne near-surface soil moisture
observations (McColl et al., 2017). These studies indicate that the
ecohydrological soil water balance framework is consistent with ground and
larger-scale remotely sensed measurements.
Parameters representative of larger-scale observations are necessary to
characterize ecohydrological processes at ecosystem scales and are more
relevant to ecohydrological modeling. These larger-scale parameters integrate
a range of ecohydrological interactions that are poorly understood and
difficult to measure. Abiotic controlling factors of soil water balance
including rainfall and soil texture can generally be assessed from readily
available data, including site measurements, regionalized maps, and satellite
observations, but vegetation controls on soil water dynamics are largely
unknown and difficult to measure at hydrologically meaningful scales (Li et
al., 2017). Vegetation water-use traits are generally observed at the species
level and are not easily translated to the simple parameters necessary in
soil water balance models. The rate of soil water losses from the
near-surface soil layer, where soil moisture measurements are generally made,
do not precisely correspond to evapotranspiration observed or calculated from
meteorological stations. We thus focused on estimating parameters that are
not directly observable, particularly the soil saturation thresholds at which
vegetation controls soil water losses and the maximum rate of
evapotranspiration from a near-surface soil layer. We use an inverse modeling
approach and data that are commonly collected at environmental monitoring
sites or measured from satellites. We present an inference framework that
provides a means to quantify and compare the sensitivity of soil moisture
dynamics at varying scales through estimates of simple ecohydrological
parameters.
A number of studies have combined inverse modeling approaches with ground and
remotely sensed soil moisture data to extract meaningful hydrologic
information (Xu et al., 2006; Miller et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2008; Volo et
al., 2014; Wang et al., 2016; Baldwin et al., 2017). Bayesian inference
methods are effective in relating prior pdfs of observations to posterior
estimates of model parameters (Xu et al., 2006; Chen et al., 2008; Baldwin et
al., 2017). The soil water balance model provides a direct analytical
equation for soil saturation pdfs that is convenient to use with the Bayesian
paradigm because it is a low parameter model with few data inputs. We
selected a Bayesian inversion approach instead of a least-squares or maximum
likelihood approach because it quantifies the inference uncertainty and
improves upon the work of Miller et al. (2007), which used a least-squares
approach to calibrate soil saturation pdfs. Measures of inference uncertainty
and parameter convergence diagnostics provided by the Bayesian approach can
be used to evaluate the validity of model inversion and develop criteria to
generalize the presented framework.
We assume that if a sufficient range of soil moisture values are observed at
a site, the shape of the empirical soil saturation pdf is constrained by the
ecohydrological factors driving soil moisture dynamics. We hypothesize that
key information required to determine these ecohydrological factors is
encoded in empirical soil saturation pdfs and that this information can be
extracted by calculating the inverse of the commonly used stochastic soil
water balance. The analysis of soil saturation pdfs is a more robust and
integrated approach to investigate ecohydrological factors of soil water
dynamics than is time series analysis. Soil saturation pdfs are less
sensitive to the many sources of uncertainty, sensor noise, and common gaps
in soil moisture observations and do not require high-quality, co-located,
and concurrent hydrologic measurements that are often lacking. We tested
three key assumptions embedded in the proposed method. (i) The analytical
soil saturation pdfs properly describe empirical soil saturation pdfs
observed in annual data. Annual soil moisture records can be affected by
transitional dynamics between wet and dry seasons, and the appropriate level
of model complexity must be used. We compare parameter identifiability using
an annual and a seasonal formulation of the analytical soil saturation pdfs.
(ii) Parameter estimates and their uncertainty at point, footprint, and
satellite scales are different and reflect variability in soil water
dynamics. We determine whether the inference approach can be applied at
point, footprint, and satellite scales to provide appropriate scale-specific
parameters for ecohydrological modeling. (iii) The range of realizable soil
moisture values is captured by the selected time series and the soil
saturation pdf determined from these observations is not truncated. We
determine whether the inference method based on soil saturation pdfs is
robust against reduced data availability by repeating the model inversions on
subsets of the soil moisture time series and show that the method can be
applied to sparse datasets.
Our goal was to match empirical soil saturation pdfs derived from point-,
footprint-, and satellite-scale observations to a commonly used analytical
model. We demonstrate the use of a Bayesian inversion framework to calibrate
the ecohydrological parameters of a simple stochastic soil water balance
model that best fit empirical soil saturation pdfs. We first present data
sources, define the analytical model for soil saturation pdfs including
parameter assumptions, and detail the algorithm used in the Bayesian
inversion. Then, we present a summary of the goodness of fit of optimal
analytical soil saturation pdfs and estimated parameter uncertainty. We
evaluated results to test key method assumptions including model complexity
and data availability. Finally, we discuss the potential of the approach to
provide a simple means to investigate variability in ecohydrological
controlling factors at varying spatial scales. Our work combines modeling and
empirical approaches in ecohydrology to provide more realistic analytical
descriptions of soil moisture dynamics. Estimates of ecohydrological
parameters consistent with observed soil saturation pdfs, from point to
ecosystem scales, are needed to better characterize site-specific
ecohydrological processes.
Data and methodsData
We used daily soil moisture observations from three data products at three
spatial scales. We used point-scale soil moisture data at a depth of 10 cm
from the FLUXNET2015 data product
(http://fluxnet.fluxdata.org/data/fluxnet2015-dataset/,
last access: 22 October 2016). We used footprint-scale soil
moisture data from the Cosmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System (COSMOS)
(http://cosmos.hwr.arizona.edu/Probes/probelist.html, last access:
4 August 2017). The COSMOS soil moisture footprint measures soil
moisture at an average depth of 20 cm with a radius ranging from 130 to
240 m, depending on site characteristics (Köhli et al., 2015).
Near-surface soil moisture observations at a spatial resolution of
0.25∘ were taken from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Climate
change Initiative (CCI) project. We used the combined soil moisture product
(ECV-SM, version 0.2.2) that merges soil moisture retrievals from four
passive (SMMR, SMM/I, TMI, and ASMR-E) and two active (AMI and ASCAT)
coarse-resolution microwave sensors (Liu et al., 2011, 2012; Wagner et al.,
2012). Although the ECV-SM sensing depth is < 5 cm, it has been
shown to have a close relation to ground-based observations of soil moisture
in the upper 10 cm (Dorigo et al., 2015). We compiled daily rainfall time
series from the FLUXNET2015 dataset for the point- and footprint-scale
analysis, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA)
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) dataset (Huffman et al., 2007) for
the satellite-scale analysis.
We selected four sites with soil moisture and rainfall data available for the
2012 calendar year (Fig. 1, Table 1). Selected sites spanned a range of land
cover types, including crop and grasslands, oak savanna, deciduous forest and
pine forest. We determined the dominant soil texture of the upper soil layer
from the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) (version 1.2)
(FAO/IIASA/ISRIC/ISS-CAS/JRC, 2012) for each site. We used soil porosity values, derived from the HWSD
available as ancillary data through the ESA-CCI data product, for the
satellite-scale analysis. We used the maximum soil moisture observation
during the year 2012 as a site-specific soil porosity estimate for point- and
footprint-scale data products. We used soil porosity for each site to
calculate soil saturation s (0 ≤s≤ 1) from each observed
soil moisture value. We do not expect the differences in data quality between
data sources and sites to significantly affect empirical soil saturation pdfs
and resulting parameter estimates. All sites had full records of daily point-
and footprint-scale observations except for US-Me2, which had 55 missing
footprint-scale observations during winter when the ground was saturated and
frozen. The number of daily satellite-scale observations in the 2012 records
ranged from 202 to 283.
Soil saturation and rainfall time series from (a) US-ARM,
(b) US-MMS, (c) US-Ton, and (d) US-Me2.
Latitude and longitude in parentheses correspond the centroid of
the satellite area associated with the site location; MAT, mean annual
temperature from long-term FLUXNET2015 data; MAP, mean annual precipitation
from long-term FLUXNET2015 data; soil texture taken from the HWSD; n,
porosity; Ks, saturated soil hydraulic conductivity; b, pore
size distribution index; sh, hydroscopic point; sfc,
field capacity; α, observed average daily rainfall depth in 2012; the
subscript “w” indicates that α was computed for only the wet season
months; λ, observed average daily rainfall frequency in 2012; the
subscript “w” indicates that λ was computed for only the wet season
months; td, number of days in the dry season; superscripts
(p), (f), and (s) correspond to
values used for the point-, footprint-, and satellite-scale analysis.
Citations for each FLUXNET2015 site: Biraud (2002), Novick and
Phillips (1999), Law (2002), and Baldocchi (2001).
Analytical model for soil saturation probability density functions (pdfs)Model definition
Our framework is based on a standard bucket model of soil column hydrology
at a point forced with stochastic precipitation inputs and in which soil
water losses are a function of soil saturation. We followed the simple
formulation of soil water losses in Laio et al. (2001a). We applied two
associated analytical formulations for the soil saturation pdf detailed
below and derived under the assumption of steady state, wherein parameters
are constant for a given period of time. The annual model assumed an annual
rainfall pattern and the seasonal model accounted for a wet season rainfall
pattern and a dry season of negligible rainfall.
The soil water balance model is defined at a point and a daily time step,
for a soil with porosity n, and assuming that soil saturation is uniform
in the considered soil column of depth Z. Rainfall, the only input to the
soil water balance, is treated as a Poisson distribution characterized by an
average event frequency λ and average event intensity α.
For simplicity, we assumed that the rainfall applied was equal to the amount
that reached the ground surface and that interception by vegetation was
negligible. Interception may be a significant component of the soil water
balance at forested sites and may need to be considered in future extensions
of this work. The daily soil water balance is the difference between the
rate of rainfall infiltration φ and the rate of soil moisture losses χ:
nZds(t)dt=φ[s(t);t]-χ[s(t)].φ[s(t); t] is both a stochastic process
controlled by rainfall and also a state-dependent process because excess
rainfall relative to available soil storage is converted to surface runoff.
the soil moisture loss curve, χ[s(t)], includes leakage
losses due to gravity and evapotranspiration and is described in stages
determined by five soil saturation thresholds (Laio et al., 2001a). These
stages are: (i) the saturation point (s= 1), at which all pores are filled
with water; (ii) the field capacity (sfc), at which soil-gravity
drainage becomes negligible compared to evaporation; (iii) the point of
incipient stomata closure (s*), at which plants begin to reduce
transpiration from water stress; (iv) the wilting point (sw), at which
plants cease to transpire; and (v) the hydroscopic point (sh), at which
water is bound to the soil matrix. Soil water losses are controlled by
physical soil properties for saturation states above sfc. The rate of
leakage due to gravity is assumed maximum when soil is saturated (Ks)
and decays exponentially to zero at sfc (Brooks and Corey, 1964). Soil
water losses are controlled by micro-meteorological conditions for
saturation states between sfc and s*. The rate of
evapotranspiration is assumed to occur at a maximum rate (Emax),
independent of the saturation state. Soil water losses are controlled
primarily by vegetation for saturation states between s* and sw.
Plants close their stomata in response to soil water deficits that
drive leaf water potential gradients, as well as to atmospheric vapor
pressure deficits, and evapotranspiration decreases linearly from Emax
to Ew at sw. Soil water losses are controlled by soil diffusivity
for soil saturation states below sw, and soil evaporation decreases
linearly from Ew to zero at sh. Soil water losses are negligible
for soil saturation states below sh. For this simplified theoretical
description of the soil water loss curve and stochastic rainfall forcing,
the analytical solution of the steady state probability distributions of
soil saturation, p(s) , was given by Laio et al. (2001a):
p(s)=0,0<s≤sh,Cηws-shsw-shλsw-shηw-1e-γs,sh<s≤sw,Cηw1+ηηw-1s-sws*-swλs*-swη-ηw-1e-γs,sw<s≤s*,Cηe-γs+ληs-s*ηηwλs*-swη-ηw,s*<s≤sfc,Cηe-(β+γ)s+βsfcηeβs(η-m)eβsfc+meβsλβ(η-m)+1×ηηwλs*-swη-ηweληsfc-s*,sfc<s≤1,
where
1γ=αnZ,ηw=EwnZ,η=EmaxnZ,m=KsnZeβ1-sfc-1,β=2b+4,
where b is an experimentally determined parameter used in the Clapp and
Hornberger (1978) soil water retention curve, and the constant C can be
obtained numerically to ensure the integral of p(s)= 1. We used a
simplifying relation Ew= 0.05Emax to reduce the
number of parameters.
We adopted Dralle and Thompson's (2016) framework to account for transient
dynamics between wet and dry seasons. We defined the dry season as a period
of duration td in which precipitation was negligible and assumed to not
contribute to soil moisture. During that period, we assumed soil saturation
decayed from an initial value s0 to s(td, s0)
given by Laio et al. (2001a). For simplicity, we determined td using
rainfall records at a monthly step (see Sect. 2.2.2) and s0 was the soil
saturation value on the last day of the wet season. Note that we did not
define s0 as the soil saturation following the last significant storm
of the wet season as was done in prior studies (Dralle and Thompson, 2016).
We then calculated the annual soil saturation pdf (pwd(s)) as
the weighted sum of the wet and dry season pdfs, pw(s) and
pd(s), respectively.
pwd(s)=1-td365pw(s)+td365pd(s)
The steady-state solution in Eq. (2) was used for the wet season pdf and the
dry season pdf is numerically determined by
pd(s)=∫01pSd|S0s,s0p0s0ds0,
where p0(s0) is the pdf of the initial dry season soil saturation,
equal to pw(s), and pSd|S0(s, s0) is
the pdf of dry season soil saturation given an initial condition s0.
pSd|S0s,s0=Cdtdeβs0-sηd-meβs0-s-ηd+m+meβs0-sfc,sfc<s≤1,1ηd,s*<s≤sfc,1ηd-ηwds*-swηd-ηwds-sw+ηwds*-sw,sw<s≤s*1ηwdsw-shs-sh,sh<s≤sw0,s0≤s,0,s≤sh,0,s≤std,s0
where ηd and ηwd are equivalent
to η and ηw relative to Emaxd, the
maximum evapotranspiration rate during the dry season, and Cd is
a normalization constant. We used the analytical expression for soil
saturation decay, s(t, s0), in the absence of rainfall given by Laio
et al. (2001a) to derive pSd|S0(s, s0).
Climate, soil, and vegetation parameter characterization
We chose readily available data for rainfall characteristics (λ and
α), length of the dry period (td), and physical soil
parameters (sfc, sh, Ks, and b) needed
in the analytical models of soil saturation pdfs (Eqs. 2 and 3). We focused
on estimating the ecohydrological parameters s*, sw,
and Emax, which describe vegetation control on soil water losses
and are not easily observable.
We calculated rainfall characteristics λ and α for the year
and wet season months for each site from FLUXNET2015 and TRMM rainfall
records following Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. (1984) (Table 1). We used
FLUXNET2015 rainfall characteristics for point- and footprint-scale analyses,
and we used TRMM rainfall characteristics for the satellite-scale analysis.
TRMM rainfall records were generally consistent with ground-based
measurements. For each location, we evaluated monthly FLUXNET2015 rainfall
depth and categorized consecutive months contributing < 5 % of the
site's annual rainfall as dry season months (Fig. 1). We then calculated the
length of the dry period (td) as the number of days in those dry
months. We used physical soil characteristics for soil textures at each site
(sh, Ks, and b) from Rawls et al. (1982) (Table 1).
We estimated sfc from each soil saturation record (Table 1) to be
consistent with the assumption that drainage losses are insignificant
compared to evapotranspiration losses the day following a rain event. We
identified all days in the 2012 record following an observed decrease in soil
saturation and estimated sfc as the 95th percentile of the soil
saturation value of the selected days. Daily soil saturation
below sw and above sfc is rare (Laio et al., 2001a),
so we did not expect the average soil texture values
for sh and Ks to significantly affect the results.
Soil depths Z are 10, 20, and 5 cm for the point, footprint, and satellite
scales, respectively. Emax is only a fraction of the atmospheric
moisture demand (or potential evapotranspiration) contributed by that soil
depth because we used a soil depth that is shallower than the rooting depth.
Consequently our framework includes four (or three if seasonality is ignored)
unknown soil water balance parameters, s*, sw,
Emax, and Emaxd. We estimated these
parameters over the following intervals:
sh≤s*≤sfc,sh≤sw≤sfc,0≤Emax≤10,0≤Emaxd≤10,
where 10 mm day-1 is the pre-defined upper possible boundary for
potential evapotranspiration.
Bayesian inversion approachApplication of the Bayes theorem
We related p(S), the empirical soil saturation pdf of the
j= [1, …, m] soil saturation observations (sj), and the
analytical soil saturation pdfs in Eqs. (2) or (3) derived from the simple
soil water balance model in Eq. (1) with up to four unknown soil water
balance parameters θ=[s*, sw, Emax,
Emaxd] using the Bayes' theorem defined as
p(θ|S)=p(S|θ)p(θ)p(S),
where the posterior distribution, p(θ|S), is the solution of the inverse problem and describes the
probability of model parameters θ given the set
S=[s1s2, … sm] of soil saturation observations.
Assuming uninformed prior knowledge, the prior distribution of model
parameters θ, p(θ), were defined by uniform
distributions over the intervals (Eq. 6). The conditional probability of
observations S given model parameters θ, p(S|θ), is the
likelihood function of model parameters θ.
Parameter estimation
We used the Metropolis–Hastings Markov chain Monte Carlo (MH-MCMC) technique
to estimate the posterior distribution of p(θ|S) by drawing
random model samples θi from p(θ) and evaluating
p(S|θi) (Metropolis et al., 1953; Hastings, 1970; Xu et al.,
2006). We defined the likelihood function of a model i,
p(S|θi), as
pS|θi=∏j=1mpsj|θi,
where p(sj|θi) is the probability of observation sj given
Eqs. (2) or (3) using parameters θi.
The MH-MCMC technique converges to a stationary distribution according to the
ergodicity theorem in Markov chain theory. The sampling algorithm consisted
of repeating two steps: (i) a proposing step, in which the algorithm
generates a new model θi′ using a random function that is symmetric
about the previously accepted model θi, and (ii) a moving step, to
determine whether the model should be accepted or rejected, in which
θi′ is tested against the Metropolis criterion (a) defined as
a=pS|θi′pS|θi.
If a> 1, θi was accepted and θi+1=θi′
was used for the next sample. If a< 1, a random number p*∈ [0, 1]
was drawn from a uniform distribution and compared to a. If p*<a,
θi′ was accepted and θi+1=θi′ was used
for the next sample. If p*>a, θi′ was rejected and
θi+1=θi was used for the next sample. If
θi′ was an inconsistent model in which soil saturation thresholds
(sw, s*) were ranked incorrectly or any of the soil water
balance parameters (s*, sw, Emax, Emaxd) were
outside of their defined physical bounds, the model likelihood was zero and
θi′ was never accepted. The log-likelihood was more convenient to
compute than the likelihood. The symmetric function used in the proposing
step was a Gaussian distribution with a mean value equal to the accepted
model θi and a standard deviation of 1 % of interval range for
which each parameter is defined in Eq. (6). We selected this value of the
standard deviation of each model parameter after a number of test runs to
generally ensure an acceptance rate between 20 and 50 % (Roberts and
Rosenthal, 2001). We obtained statistics of the estimated parameters in θ
from the union of three run samples of 20 000 simulations each.
The burn-in period is the number of simulations after which the running mean
and standard deviation are stabilized. We considered a burn-in period of
10,000 simulations, which were discarded for each run sample. If the
acceptance rate of a run sample was < 1 or > 90 %
after the burn-in period, we discarded the run and concluded that the
algorithm was stuck in a local minimum that might be physically impossible.
We evaluated convergence by the Gelman–Rubin (GR) diagnostic (Gelman and
Rubin, 1992) on the run samples. The GR diagnostic determines that the
algorithm reaches convergence when the within-run variability (σw)
is roughly equal to the between-run variability (σb), that
is, when σw/σb approaches one. We verified that the GR
diagnostic for each estimated parameter was < 1.1. If the GR
diagnostic did not indicate that the three run samples converged, we
discarded the run with the lowest likelihood and re-initiated a new run
sample until convergence was attained. We counted the number of attempts to
quantify how rapidly convergence occurred. We computed mean and standard
deviation for each parameter from a total of 30 000 simulations of θ
resulting from the three converging run samples. A mean analytical model of
soil saturation pdf was determined by applying Eqs. (2) or (3) with the
mean values of the 30 000 posterior parameter estimates.
Model evaluation criteria
We did not have direct measurement to validate the parameters s*,
sw, and Emax estimated through the Bayesian inversion methods. We
therefore analysed convergence and uncertainty metrics of the model
inversion and goodness of fit between empirical and analytical soil
saturation pdfs to evaluate the identifiability of the ecohydrological
parameters. We compared the optimum analytical pdf derived from the mean
parameter estimates and the empirical pdfs derived from observations. We
evaluated the model inversion using the following criteria:
Convergence of the Bayesian inversion: a GR diagnostic < 1.1 for all
unknown parameters is obtained from the union of three run samples and
within ≤ 10 sample runs.
Low uncertainty in parameter estimates: the posterior distributions of
parameter estimates are physically plausible and have coefficients of
variations < 20 %.
Goodness of fit: a quantile-level Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE)
(Müller et al., 2014) > 0.85 and a Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic < 0.2.
Method assessment
Major assumptions and limitations embedded in the proposed inference
framework were tested through the analysis detailed below. We assume, for
each scale and location, that the shape of empirical the soil saturation
pdfs is controlled by the physical constraints used to parameterize the
analytical model of soil saturation pdfs, these parameters can be determined
with some certainty and reflect variability in soil water dynamics. We
expect that estimated soil saturation thresholds have greater certainty when
the empirical soil saturation pdf is defined around those values and greater
uncertainty when fewer soil saturation values are observed around the
thresholds. We acknowledge that pre-defined rainfall characteristics and
physical soil parameters based on observations or literature values may not
be exactly representative of the processes at each location or scale and
could also create biases and uncertainties in the fitted parameters of
interest. We used model evaluation criteria (Sect. 2.4) to investigate the
applicability of the inference framework with varying model complexities,
scales, locations and data availability.
Analytical expressions for soil saturation pdfs were derived under the
assumption of steady state. Annual soil moisture records can be affected by
transitional dynamics between wet and dry seasons, and the appropriate level
of model complexity must be used. We applied the inversion framework to
annual soil saturation using variations of the analytical model for soil
saturation pdfs of increasing complexity: (i) the annual model in Eq. (2)
and (ii) the seasonal model in Eq. (3). We determined whether the added
complexity of the dry season pdf increases the identifiability of
ecohydrological parameters or if the simpler annual model is sufficiently
consistent with annual empirical soil saturation pdfs.
We compared co-located parameter estimates and their uncertainty at point,
footprint, and satellite scales for each site. We determine whether the
inference approach can provide appropriate scale-specific parameters for
ecohydrological modeling at each location.
We assumed that the whole range of realizable soil saturation values was
captured within the selected time series at each scale and that the
resulting soil saturation pdf was not truncated. If the range of observed
values is not representative of the soil saturation pdf because it is
truncated or affected by noise in the data, parameter estimates may be
biased. Minimum and maximum observed soil saturation values during 2012
(Table 1) indicate the range of observed soil saturation values we used to
estimate ecohydrological parameters. We determine whether the inference
method based on soil saturation pdfs is robust against reduced data
availability by repeating the model inversions on subsets of the soil
saturation time series and show that the method can be applied to sparse
datasets. We performed the model inversion using subsets of each soil
saturation record by randomly resampling fractions of the data down to 10 %
of the annual timeseries and computed goodness of fit statistics
between the resulting analytical models and the empirical models based on
the full annual record. We determined the number of data points necessary to
infer converging model parameters that best match observations and whether
the proposed inference method based on soil saturation pdf can be reliably
used to identify ecohydrological parameters from sparse datasets.
Estimated ecohydrological parameters and goodness of fit of analytical
soil saturation pdfs.
Values in parentheses
correspond to the coefficient of variation of the posterior parameter
estimates in percentage. p, analytical model for the soil saturation pdf
without seasons, pwd, analytical model for the soil saturation
pdf including wet and dry seasons; N, number of 20 000 simulation runs
needed to obtain three converging results (see Sect. 2.3.2); NSE,
quantile-level Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency; KS, Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic;
Emax, maximum evapotranspiration in mm day-1 (the weighted
average wet and dry season Emax is reported for the
pwd model); s*, point of incipient stomatal closure;
sw, wilting point.
Results and discussionLevel of model complexity
For each of the four locations (Table 1), we obtained optimal analytical soil
saturation pdfs consistent with the empirical pdfs derived from soil
saturation observations using the Bayesian inversion framework and a MH-MCMC
algorithm. Model inversions for each site and scale and for both annual and
seasonal models met the evaluation criteria (see Sect. 2.4). Our results
indicated that the framework of Dralle and Thompson (2016) can be applied to
sites with low (US-MMS) and high (US-Ton) seasonality in rainfall patterns.
Posterior probability distributions of soil water balance
parameters (sw, s*, Emax) were well constrained
overall. The parameter estimates and their coefficient of variation as well
as the model goodness of fit statistics are summarized in Table 2. Figures 2
through 5 present a comparison between empirical as well as analytical pdfs
and associated quantile–quantile plots for point, footprint, and satellite
scales at the four study sites and for both annual and seasonal models. The
goodness of fit between empirical pdfs and analytical models was only
slightly better for the seasonal model than for the annual model. However,
the coefficient of variation of the posterior parameter distributions was
smaller for the annual model and it converged more rapidly. The Bayesian
inversion of the annual model is therefore more computationally efficient.
The parameter identifiability was not greatly improved by the more complex
seasonal model. The estimated soil saturation threshold sw was
consistently smaller for the annual model than for the seasonal model and
s* was often higher, which may indicate that sw and
s* in the annual model could be biased and may have absorbed dry season
dynamics. Previous studies calibrating soil saturation pdf models found
ecohydrological parameter values comparable to ours (Table 2). For example,
using point-scale observations at US-Ton, best-fit values of sw
and sfc were 0.26 and 0.82, respectively (Dralle and Thompson,
2016), and best-fit values of s* and Emax were 0.3 and
1.9 mm day-1, respectively (Miller et al., 2007). We did not compare
soil saturation thresholds s* and sw with literature values
of soil water potential at which stomata are fully open or closed because the
conversion of soil saturation to soil matrix potential is non-linear (Clapp
and Hornberger, 1978) and site- and scale-specific soil water retention
parameters were unknown. Average parameters derived from soil texture (Rawls
et al., 1982) were not compatible with soil moisture data from each scale and
site.
Empirical versus modeled cumulative density functions (CDFs) and
soil saturation probability distribution (p(s)) for US-ARM. The mean values
of the posterior parameter distributions were used with Eq. (2) in the annual
model and Eq. (3) in the seasonal model. The grey shaded areas correspond to
the soil saturation thresholds (sh, sw, s*,
sfc) in the water balance model.
Empirical versus modeled CDFs and soil saturation probability
distribution (p(s)) for US-MMS. The mean values of the posterior parameter
distributions were used with Eq. (2) in the annual model and Eq. (3) in the
seasonal model. The grey shaded areas correspond to
the soil saturation thresholds (sh, sw, s*,
sfc) in the water balance model.
Empirical versus modeled CDFs and soil saturation probability
distribution (p(s)) for US-Ton. The mean values of the posterior parameter
distributions were used with Eq. (2) in the annual model and Eq. (3) in the
seasonal model. The grey shaded areas correspond to
the soil saturation thresholds (sh, sw, s*,
sfc) in the water balance model.
Empirical versus modeled CDFs and soil saturation probability
distribution (p(s)) for US-Me2. The mean values of the posterior parameter
distributions were used with Eq. (2) in the annual model and Eq. (3) in the
seasonal model. The grey shaded areas correspond to
the soil saturation thresholds (sh, sw, s*,
sfc) in the water balance model.
Goodness of fit and ecohydrological parameters inferred with decreasing
number of soil saturation observations (annual model). For each subsample
category, the median results of 10 repeats are plotted and results between the
90th and 10th percentiles are shaded. Colors correspond to the four sites in
the legend. KS, Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic; NSE, quantile-level Nash–Sutcliffe
efficiency; Emax, maximum evapotranspiration in mm day-1;
s*, point of incipient stomatal closure; sw, wilting point.
Site and scale considerations
Parameter estimates were most constrained for scales and locations at which
soil water dynamics are more sensitive to the fitted ecohydrological
parameters of interest. In these cases, convergence of the model inversion
was attained less rapidly, but ultimately provided better goodness of fit.
Soil saturation states at drier sites may be more controlled by soil water
loss parameters, while soil saturation states at wetter sites may also be
controlled by rainfall characteristics. Estimated soil saturation thresholds
had greater certainty if the empirical soil saturation pdfs were defined
around those values and had greater uncertainty if there were fewer soil
saturation values observed around the thresholds. For example, uncertainty
of sw was greater for the humid subtropical deciduous forest
site (US-MMS) than for the Mediterranean savanna sites (US-Ton), and
uncertainty of s* was greater for US-Ton than US-MMS. Similarly, soil
saturation states representing larger spatial scales were less sensitive to
specific site characteristics.
Parameter uncertainty for satellite and footprint scales was greater than for
the point scale. Estimates of larger-scale soil water balance parameters are
more relevant to regional ecohydrological dynamics. Differences in parameter
estimates among scales within a site may be associated with differences in
soil texture properties, such as porosity and field capacity, that were
determined separately for each record. Co-located and concurrent soil
saturation pdfs are different at each scale (Figs. 2–5) and suggest
variability in observed soil water dynamics at each scale. Differences in
driving processes among scales were specifically determined from the model
inversion for each scale and provided robust scale-specific parameters for
ecohydrological modeling.
Data availability
For each spatial scale and site, the annual model was inversed, using random
subsamples of 100 to 10 % of the 2012 time series (Fig. 6). For all sites
and scales the number of observations did not significantly impact model
inference. The NSE, Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic, and parameter estimates
were stable down to about 100 observations. Fitted model parameter values and
the variability of parameter estimates among the 10 repetitions in each
subsample category were not sensitive to the number of observations used.
Results indicate the identifiability of ecohydrological parameters through
the inversion of the analytical model of soil saturation pdfs was robust
because the mean and standard deviation of the randomly selected subsets of
annual data were representative of the full record. There was no correlation
between the small differences in the mean and standard deviations of the
subsamples and the model goodness of fit. The proposed inference method based
on soil saturation pdfs can therefore reliably be used to identify
ecohydrological parameters from sparse datasets. Inference methods, which do
not require continuous data, are particularly relevant to large-scale soil
moisture measurements, such as satellite products, that are not continuous.
Conclusions
We document a generalizable Bayesian inversion framework to infer parameter
values of the stochastic soil water balance model and their associated
uncertainty using freely available rainfall and soil moisture observations
at point-, footprint- and satellite-scales. Empirical pdfs derived from soil
saturation observations provided key information to determine unknown
ecohydrological parameters s*, sw, and Emax. Model
assumptions were appropriately met, and optimal analytical soil saturation
pdfs were consistent with empirical pdfs. Uncertainty in parameter estimates
were small and reflected the sensitivity of the soil water balance model to
ecohydrological parameters at varying scales and locations. We demonstrate
that the form of the simple ecohydrological model for soil saturation pdfs
was consistent with observations from point-, footprint-, and
satellite-scales. However, optimal parameters were different at each scale
because co-located and concurrent soil saturation pdfs are different at each
scale, which may result from spatial heterogeneity in soil water dynamics.
We demonstrate the advantage of analyzing soil saturation pdfs instead of
time series. We obtained stable results using sparse subsets of the
datasets, indicating that the proposed framework is robust and can be used
with non-continuous data. Although the seasonal model was conceptually more
consistent with our physical understanding of annual soil water dynamics,
the annual model provided satisfactory results matching annual empirical pdf
sites we analysed. We were not able to determine if some differences in
parameters estimated using the seasonal model are physically meaningful
because wet and dry season dynamics were better characterized in this more
complex model. Our methodology can be customized to characterize
site-specific parameters and to test consistency between observed and
analytical soil saturation pdfs for any other adaptation of the stochastic
ecohydrological framework with more or less complexity depending on the study objectives.
We provide a method based on a parsimonious soil water balance model,
requiring a minimum level of data inputs to estimate ecohydrological
characteristics that are not directly observable and for which established
estimation methods are not available. Our methods can be applied in future
studies to better understand differences in soil water dynamics at different
scales and to improve scaling of ecohydrological processes. Results
demonstrate the value of large-scale near-surface soil moisture observations
to improve characterization of soil water dynamics at ecosystem scales.
Relations between the soil saturation threshold values inferred from the
near-surface soil moisture data and dynamics in the full active rooting zone
are unknown. The datasets we used are freely available from sensor networks
and global satellite products, and methods can therefore be applied to a
large range of sites or to global analyses to improve understanding of
spatial patterns in ecohydrological parameters relevant for local and global
water cycle analyses.
We downloaded all datasets from publicly available
sources. Point-scale soil moisture and rainfall data are available through
FLUXNET2015 (http://fluxnet.fluxdata.org/data/fluxnet2015-dataset/); footprint-scale soil
moisture data are available through COSMOS
(http://cosmos.hwr.arizona.edu/Probes/probelist.html); remotely sensed
soil moisture data are available through ESA CCI
(http://www.esa-soilmoisture-cci.org/node/145); remotely sensed
rainfall data are available through NASA TRMM
(https://pmm.nasa.gov/data-access/downloads/trmm); global soil texture
data are available through FAO HWSD
(http://www.fao.org/soils-portal/soil-survey/soil-maps-and-databases/harmonized-world-soil-database-v12/en/).
Custom scripts in the Python computing language associated with our analysis
are open source (Bassiouni, 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1283371).
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
We thank Minghui Zhang, Marc Müller, David Dralle, Xue Feng, and editor
Sally Thomspon for their thoughtful reviews and useful feedback on an earlier
draft of this paper. This material is based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant
no. 1314109-DGE. Stephen P. Good acknowledges the financial support of the
US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX16AN13G). This work used
the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) via
allocation DEB160018, supported by National Science Foundation grant
number ACI-1548562. This work used data acquired and shared by the FLUXNET
community, including these networks: AmeriFlux, AfriFlux, AsiaFlux,
CarboAfrica, CarboEuropeIP, CarboItaly, CarboMont, ChinaFlux, Fluxnet-Canada,
GreenGrass, ICOS, KoFlux, LBA, NECC, OzFlux-TERN, TCOS-Siberia, and USCCC.
The FLUXNET eddy covariance data processing and harmonization were carried
out by the European Fluxes Database Cluster, AmeriFlux Management Project,
and Fluxdata project of FLUXNET, with the support of CDIAC and the ICOS
Ecosystem Thematic Center and the OzFlux, ChinaFlux, and AsiaFlux offices.
Edited by: Sally Thompson
Reviewed by: Xue Feng, David Dralle, Marc F. Muller, and Minghui Zhang
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