TY - JOUR

T1 - Modeling of coupled water and heat transfer in freezing and thawing soils, Inner Mongolia

AU - Zhao, Ying

AU - Si, Bingcheng

AU - He, Hailong

AU - Xu, Jinghui

AU - Peth, Stephan

AU - Horn, Rainer

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (41371234, 41371233, 51309193), the German Research Foundation (Forschergruppe 536) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. We thank Xinguo Han and Yongfei Bai and the Institute of Botany (Chinese Academy of Sciences) for the opportunity to work at IMGERS and Jirka ?imunek for his helps on the HYDRUS code.

PY - 2016/9/27

Y1 - 2016/9/27

N2 - Accurate simulation of soil water and heat transfer is critical to understand surface hydrology under cold conditions. Using an extended freezing code in HYDRUS-1D (freezing module), this study was conducted: (1) to evaluate the freezing module using field data collected in a grazed steppe of Inner Mongolia; and (2) to further simulate grazing effects on frozen soil hydrological processes. The experimental data consisted of soil water and temperature profiles measured during freeze-thaw cycles from 2005 to 2006 in two plots (ungrazed since 1979 (UG79) and winter grazing (WG)). To check the sensitivity of the freezing module, a model without a freezing scheme (normal module) was used for comparison. We found that while the normal module can only simulate soil water and heat transfer under unfrozen conditions, the freezing module can simulate well under both frozen and unfrozen conditions. The freezing module can reasonably compute water phase change and, therefore, substantially improved the simulation of the evolution of liquid water and temperature in frozen soil. It overestimated liquid water content during spring snowmelt and, thus, underestimated surface runoff from underlying frozen soil layers. Furthermore, the weak prediction of soil moisture at the WG site, compared with the UG79 site, might relate to the less than ideal parameterization of soil hydraulic properties. Our results confirmed that the freezing module was able to accurately predict behaviors of soil freezing and thawing, as well as the effects of land management. We suggest that detailed knowledge of the soil-atmosphere processes is needed to improve the surface runoff algorithm in the frozen soil module.

AB - Accurate simulation of soil water and heat transfer is critical to understand surface hydrology under cold conditions. Using an extended freezing code in HYDRUS-1D (freezing module), this study was conducted: (1) to evaluate the freezing module using field data collected in a grazed steppe of Inner Mongolia; and (2) to further simulate grazing effects on frozen soil hydrological processes. The experimental data consisted of soil water and temperature profiles measured during freeze-thaw cycles from 2005 to 2006 in two plots (ungrazed since 1979 (UG79) and winter grazing (WG)). To check the sensitivity of the freezing module, a model without a freezing scheme (normal module) was used for comparison. We found that while the normal module can only simulate soil water and heat transfer under unfrozen conditions, the freezing module can simulate well under both frozen and unfrozen conditions. The freezing module can reasonably compute water phase change and, therefore, substantially improved the simulation of the evolution of liquid water and temperature in frozen soil. It overestimated liquid water content during spring snowmelt and, thus, underestimated surface runoff from underlying frozen soil layers. Furthermore, the weak prediction of soil moisture at the WG site, compared with the UG79 site, might relate to the less than ideal parameterization of soil hydraulic properties. Our results confirmed that the freezing module was able to accurately predict behaviors of soil freezing and thawing, as well as the effects of land management. We suggest that detailed knowledge of the soil-atmosphere processes is needed to improve the surface runoff algorithm in the frozen soil module.

KW - Frozen soil module

KW - Grazing

KW - Inner Mongolia grassland

KW - Water phase change

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84994577538&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/w8100424

DO - 10.3390/w8100424

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84994577538

VL - 8

JO - Water (Switzerland)

JF - Water (Switzerland)

SN - 2073-4441

IS - 10

M1 - 424

ER -