Understanding Regional Climate Change Consequences Through the Changes in Soil Moisture Regimes

HR: 0800h
AN: GC11A-0129 [Abstracts]
TI: Understanding Regional Climate Change Consequences Through the Changes in Soil Moisture Regimes
AU: Hayes, M
EM: mhayes2@unl.edu
AF: National Drought Mitigation Center, 3310 Holdrege Street School of Natural Resources University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0988, United States
AU: * Trnka, M
EM: mirek_trnka@yahoo.com
AF: Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Zemedelska 1, Brno, 613 00, Czech Republic
AU: * Trnka, M
EM: mirek_trnka@yahoo.com
AF: Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Bocni II 1401, Prague, 14131, Czech Republic
AU: Svoboda, M
EM: msvoboda2@unl.edu
AF: National Drought Mitigation Center, 3310 Holdrege Street School of Natural Resources University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0988, United States
AU: Hlavinka, P
EM: phlavinka@centrum.cz
AF: Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Zemedelska 1, Brno, 613 00, Czech Republic
AU: Balek, J
EM: jan.balek.83@seznam.cz
AF: Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Zemedelska 1, Brno, 613 00, Czech Republic
AU: Dubrovsky, M
EM: dub@ufa.cas.cz
AF: Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Zemedelska 1, Brno, 613 00, Czech Republic
AU: Dubrovsky, M
EM: dub@ufa.cas.cz
AF: Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Bocni II 1401, Prague, 14131, Czech Republic
AU: Wilhite, D
EM: dwilhite2@unl.edu
AF: National Drought Mitigation Center, 3310 Holdrege Street School of Natural Resources University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0988, United States
AU: Pokorny, E
EM: pokorny@mendelu.cz
AF: Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Zemedelska 1, Brno, 613 00, Czech Republic
AU: Bartosova, L
EM: l_bartosova@yahoo.com
AF: Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Zemedelska 1, Brno, 613 00, Czech Republic
AU: Eitzinger, J
EM: sepp@tornado.boku.ac.at
AF: Institute for Meteorology, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Gregor Mendel Strasse 33, Vienna, A-1180, Austria
AB: Soils are an important control on water fluxes in the landscape and in many parts of the world act as the most important water reservoir mitigating the effects of rainfall variability. Soil moisture and temperature regimes are inherently more stable and quantifiable than their atmospheric counterparts and are essential in determining the environmental conditions of any region. They can also be used to demonstrate the impacts of climate change on a given region as they integrate not only the change of climate variables but also existing soil condition status and plant cover. In addition, the globally valid analysis of soil moisture and temperature regimes makes it possible to present a variety of consequences of climate change in terms of analogs. In order to easily estimate the soil moisture and temperature regime at a given site, or within a selected region, a software SoilClim was developed, tested, and applied in two markedly different regions of the Northern Hemisphere. SoilClim is based on an enhanced daily water balance model that incorporates interactions between the soil and atmosphere through a dynamic module of vegetation cover. SoilClim was developed by an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers and students. After an evaluation, SoilClim was run both in Central Europe and in Nebraska with the climatic data corresponding to the conditions expected under future climates taking into account two Global Circulation Models (ECHAM and HadCM) and assuming the B1 and A2-SRES scenarios with low and high climate sensitivity for time slices of 2025, 2050 and 2100. It was found that under the present climate only a fraction of the territory of Central Europe is situated within the dry tempudic soil moisture regime, with high drought risk being confined to a small area. However, under a changing climate, a notable increase of the areas with a high probability of dry events was noted as well as sharp reduction of perudic (very-wet) mountainous areas that are essential for sustainable river flow. We found an especially alarming rate of these shifts in the soil climate characteristics taking place within decades rather than centuries. According to the SoilClim model, a new soil climate type that has not been recorded up to now at both case study areas might be expected at both regions between 2050 and 2100. The predicted changes in the soil climate regimes are closely related to drought impacts (e.g. decrease of crop yields, damage to forest stands, low streamflow and reservoir levels, etc.) or changes in the dynamics of key soil processes (e.g. rate of carbon sequestration or mineralization) and should be a part of a complex climate change impact assessment. Acknowledgement: The development of SoilClim and the international cooperation and data sharing was supported by the KONTAKT projects ME 844 and 17/2006. The Czech part of the study was supported by the Research plan No. MSM6215648905 .
UR: http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/smr.html
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (0429, 3309)
DE: 1626 Global climate models (3337, 4928)
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 1812 Drought
DE: 1866 Soil moisture
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting