Hydrologic Memory Patterns Assessment over a Drought-Prone Canadian Prairies Catchment

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding the persistence in land surface processes, such as that in the deep subsurface moisture storage, has great implications for seasonal weather prediction over a drainage basin. The Canadian Prairies is a region of intense and recurrent drought outbreaks with myriad negative impacts on the regional ecosystem as well as on all sectors of the Prairies’ economy due to high mitigation costs associated with these frequent outbreaks. Given that there are neither physical observations of soil moisture at depths of hydrological importance nor measurements of the total water storage over drought-prone Canadian Prairies subcatchments, this places constraints on studies that focus on the assessments of the interrelationship between the land surface and atmospheric processes. This study focuses on the estimation of the memory in the simulated deep soil moisture and total water storages over the 406,000 km2 Saskatchewan River Basin (SRB) in the Canadian Prairies using a physically based land surfac...