Curvature distribution within hillslopes and catchments and its effect on the hydrological response P. W. Bogaart and P. A. Troch Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands now at: Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA Received: 23 March 2006 – Accepted: 26 April 2006 – Published: 20 June 2006 ...

Accurate estimation of green aboveground biomass in arid and semiarid grassland is essential for a variety of studies, such as sustainable grassland management, fire risk assessment, climate change, and environmental degradation. A great need exists for the establishment of robust method for estimating green aboveground biomass in arid and semiarid grassland due to the influences of soil backgr...

Forest vegetation, especially tree roots, helps stabilize hillslopes by reinforcing soil shear strength. To evaluate the effect of tree roots on slope stability, information about the amount of roots and their strength should be known. A simulation model for the root distribution of Cryptomeria japonica was proposed where the number of roots in each 0.5.cm diameter class can be calculated at ar...

In agricultural watersheds, human interventions such as channel straightening have disrupted the hydrologic connectivity between headwater streams and their riparian environment thus undermined ecological services provided by these small streams. Knowledge of immediate (shallow groundwater in historical floodplain on adjacent hillslopes) human-impacted settings is critical for understanding res...

Accurate estimation of latent heat flux (LE) is critical in characterizing semiarid ecosystems. Many LE algorithms have been developed during the past few decades. However, the algorithms have not been directly compared, particularly over global semiarid ecosystems. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of five LE models over semiarid ecosystems such as grassland, shrub, and savanna using...

Estimation of Soil Erosion using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Geographic Information System (GIS) on the Rangeland Hillslopes

Vegetation change, whether it be of anthropogenic or climatic origin, can have dramatic effects on landscape form, processes and sediment yield. General conceptual models for relationships between climate, vegetation and sediment yield exist for whole landscapes, but no rigorous analysis of the effects of vegetation change on sediment transport, in the absence of overland flow, has been done fr...

Understanding hillslope runoff response to intense rainfall is an important topic in hydrology, and is key to correct prediction of extreme stream flow, erosion and landslides. Although it is known that preferential flow processes activated by macropores are an important phenomena in understanding runoff processes inside a hillslope, hydrological models have generally not embraced the concept o...

[1] Semiarid rangelands are a significant global sink for methane (CH4), but this sink strength may be altered by climate change. Methane uptake is sensitive to soil moisture showing a hump‐shaped relationship with a distinct optimum soil moisture level. Both CO2 and temperature affect soil moisture, but the direction of CH4 uptake response may depend on if the system is below or above the soil...

Semiarid grasslands accumulate soil beneath plant ‘‘islands’’ that are raised above bare interspaces. This fine-scale variation in microtopographic relief is plant-induced and is increased with shrub establishment. Research found that fire-induced water repellency enhanced local-scale soil erosion that reduced variation in microtopographic relief, suggesting that fire may counteract vegetation-...