Abstract
Soil moisture influences plant growth and hydrological processes. Studying the response characteristics of soil moisture to winter rainfall under different vegetation types in humid karst areas is important for optimizing the restoration patterns in these areas. To this end, we monitored the soil moisture content of arable, grassland, shrub, and forest areas in the karst of Guanling County, Guizhou Province, China, at 10-min intervals. The rainfall threshold for the soil moisture response was the smallest in grassland areas. Under different vegetation types, the soil moisture increase tended to be maximized in light-rainfall events and minimized in medium-rainfall events. Moreover, the increase in soil moisture in the profile under the different vegetation types generally decreased with increasing soil depth during light and rainstorm events, but the opposite variation pattern was observed during moderate-rainfall events. In different rainfall events, the soil moisture recharge and soil moisture decrease were greatest in grassland areas. Among the vegetation types, shrubs maintained the highest mean soil moisture content in winter, with a higher recharge and a smaller decrease in soil moisture. This suggests that shrubs can better maintain their soil moisture content in winter than other vegetation types, which has implications for the selection of regional vegetation restoration patterns.
Highlights
Soil moisture plays an important role in the growth of vegetation (Brantley et al 2017; Laio et al 2001)
The number of light rainfall events accounted for 80% of the t otal rainfall events, moderate rainfall events accounted for 13.3% of the total rainfall events, and rainstorm events accounted for 6.7% of the total rainfall events
The soil moisture in the dif ferent soil layers (0–20 cm) of the grassland areas responded to a winter rainfall event with a to tal rainfall of only 0.87 mm likely because grassland areas have a smaller ability to trap rainfall, allowing the smaller total rainfall to pass through the grassland vegetation and reach the soil
Summary
Soil moisture plays an important role in the growth of vegetation (Brantley et al 2017; Laio et al 2001). It is important to study the responses of soil moisture to rainfall in ka rst regions with different vegetation types. The soil moisture in shrub areas is more sensitive to rainfall than that in grassland or forest areas (Sun et al 2015; Wang et al 2008). S un et al (2015) studied the soil moisture dynamics in shrub, forest, and grassland areas in arid regio ns and found that soil moisture in shrub areas is the most sensitive to single rainfall events. In semi-arid regions, soil moisture in grassland areas is more sensitive to rainfall than that in sh rub or forest areas (Li et al 2013; Su and Shangguan 2019; Tang et al 2019; Yu et al 2018). In sub-humid regions, the response of grassland soil moisture to rainfall is more sensitive than that of shrub or forest soil moisture
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