Understanding and simulating of three-dimensional subsurface hydrological partitioning in an alpine mountainous area, China

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Critical zone (CZ) plays a vital role in sustaining biodiversity and humanity. However, flux quantification within CZ, particularly in terms of subsurface hydrological partitioning, remains a significant challenge. This study focused on quantifying subsurface hydrological partitioning, specifically in an alpine mountainous area, and highlighted the important role of lateral flow during this process. Precipitation was usually classified as two parts into the soil: increased soil water content (SWC) and lateral flow out of the soil pit. It was found that 65%–88% precipitation contributed to lateral flow. The second common partitioning class showed an increase in SWC caused by both precipitation and lateral flow into the soil pit. In this case, lateral flow contributed to the SWC increase ranging from 43% to 74%, which was notably larger than the SWC increase caused by precipitation. On alpine meadows, lateral flow from the soil pit occurred when the shallow soil was wetter than the field capacity. This result highlighted the need for three-dimensional simulation between soil layers in Earth system models (ESMs). During evapotranspiration process, significant differences were observed in the classification of subsurface hydrological partitioning among different vegetation types. Due to tangled and aggregated fine roots in the surface soil on alpine meadows, the majority of subsurface responses involved lateral flow, which provided 98%–100% of evapotranspiration (ET). On grassland, there was a high probability (0.87), which ET was entirely provided by lateral flow. The main reason for underestimating transpiration through soil water dynamics in previous research was the neglect of lateral root water uptake. Furthermore, there was a probability of 0.12, which ET was entirely provided by SWC decrease on grassland. In this case, there was a high probability (0.98) that soil water responses only occurred at layer 2 (10–20 cm), because grass roots mainly distributed in this soil layer, and grasses often used their deep roots for water uptake during ET. To improve the estimation of soil water dynamics and ET, we established a random forest (RF) model to simulate lateral flow and then corrected the community land model (CLM). RF model demonstrated good performance and led to significant improvements in CLM simulation. These findings enhance our understanding of subsurface hydrological partitioning and emphasize the importance of considering lateral flow in ESMs and hydrological research.