Using stable water isotopes to understand ecohydrological partitioning under contrasting land uses in a drought-sensitive rural, lowland catchment

Jessica Landgraf; Dörthe Tetzlaff; Songjun Wu; Jonas Freymüller; Chris Soulsby

doi:10.1002/hyp.14779

Using stable water isotopes to understand ecohydrological partitioning under contrasting land uses in a drought-sensitive rural, lowland catchment

Jessica Landgraf^* (Corresponding Author), Dörthe Tetzlaff, Songjun Wu, Jonas Freymüller, Chris Soulsby

^*Corresponding author for this work

Geography & Environment

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Abstract

Vegetation plays an essential role in water partitioning, as it strongly influences evapotranspiration, infiltration and water retention. To analyse the influence of vegetation on water partitioning under innovative land management strategies, we used stable water isotopes as natural tracers to monitor precipitation, soil water and groundwater fluxes over the growing season of 2021 (March–October). We selected eight plot sites with four contrasting land covers and soil types in the drought-sensitive Demnitzer Millcreek Catchment (DMC) in NE Germany. The land use types include forest, grassland, and arable with the latter being subdivided into conventional (e.g., crops) and innovative (e.g., agroforestry) sites. Two weather stations, a flux tower, and in situ soil moisture monitoring complemented our isotopic data with a hydroclimatic context. The year of 2021 had near-normal precipitation totals compared to the prolonged drought of 2018–20. Soil water storage was highest at the agricultural sites, while lowest at the forest, though this reflected both the influence of soil properties (as forests dominated sand soils while crops loam soils) and the greater evapotranspiration from forests. We also estimated soil water ages and found the greatest isotopic variability and fastest turnover of water in the upper soils of arable sites. The forest soil water had the most limited variability in isotopic composition and tended to be older, revealing lower levels of groundwater recharge. Conventional and innovative cropping sites were similar to each other, likely due to the early tree development stage in agroforestry schemes under the latter. Our investigation revealed the forest sites are potentially most vulnerable to limited water availability in the DMC and land use changes in agricultural land lacked major differences in ecohydrological fluxes over the study year. The study further underlines the need for long-term observations of recent adaptive land use changes and drought-sensitive vegetation to improve our understanding and evolve drought resilient land management strategies considering time lags in impacts and non-stationarity.

Original language	English
Article number	e14779
Number of pages	20
Journal	Hydrological Processes
Volume	36
Issue number	12
Early online date	26 Dec 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14779
Publication status	Published - 26 Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge the BMBF (funding code 033W034A) which supported the stable isotope laboratory and the Open Access Publication Fund by IGB and the Leibniz Association's Open Access Publishing Fund. Funding for DT was also received through the Einstein Research Unit ‘Climate and Water under Change’ from the Einstein Foundation Berlin and Berlin University Alliance. Contributions from CS were supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the ISO-LAND project (Grant No. RPG 2018 375). The authors are grateful to Hauke Dämpfling, and Jan Christopher who were involved in the setup and maintenance of the monitoring systems of the DMC. We also thank David Dubbert for stable water isotope analysis and Christian Marx for creating an R script processing soil stable water isotope data. We thank the colleagues from the Finck Foundation (www.finck-stiftung.org) for the trustful collaboration, for providing access to the study sites (with different, also regenerative, multifunctional land uses) and for supporting our study with their experiences of climate and soil effects during the transition to regenerative land use models. We are thankful for the technical support by the WLV (Wasser und Landschaftspflegeverband Untere Spree). Further, we thank Aaron Andrew Smith for discussing several statistical approaches, and Jan Christopher and Ralf Parsche for their help in soil sampling.

Keywords

drought
ecohydrological partitioning
ecohydrology
intermittent streams
land management
land use
soil moisture
stable water isotopes

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Cite this

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title = "Using stable water isotopes to understand ecohydrological partitioning under contrasting land uses in a drought-sensitive rural, lowland catchment",

abstract = "Vegetation plays an essential role in water partitioning, as it strongly influences evapotranspiration, infiltration and water retention. To analyse the influence of vegetation on water partitioning under innovative land management strategies, we used stable water isotopes as natural tracers to monitor precipitation, soil water and groundwater fluxes over the growing season of 2021 (March–October). We selected eight plot sites with four contrasting land covers and soil types in the drought-sensitive Demnitzer Millcreek Catchment (DMC) in NE Germany. The land use types include forest, grassland, and arable with the latter being subdivided into conventional (e.g., crops) and innovative (e.g., agroforestry) sites. Two weather stations, a flux tower, and in situ soil moisture monitoring complemented our isotopic data with a hydroclimatic context. The year of 2021 had near-normal precipitation totals compared to the prolonged drought of 2018–20. Soil water storage was highest at the agricultural sites, while lowest at the forest, though this reflected both the influence of soil properties (as forests dominated sand soils while crops loam soils) and the greater evapotranspiration from forests. We also estimated soil water ages and found the greatest isotopic variability and fastest turnover of water in the upper soils of arable sites. The forest soil water had the most limited variability in isotopic composition and tended to be older, revealing lower levels of groundwater recharge. Conventional and innovative cropping sites were similar to each other, likely due to the early tree development stage in agroforestry schemes under the latter. Our investigation revealed the forest sites are potentially most vulnerable to limited water availability in the DMC and land use changes in agricultural land lacked major differences in ecohydrological fluxes over the study year. The study further underlines the need for long-term observations of recent adaptive land use changes and drought-sensitive vegetation to improve our understanding and evolve drought resilient land management strategies considering time lags in impacts and non-stationarity.",

keywords = "drought, ecohydrological partitioning, ecohydrology, intermittent streams, land management, land use, soil moisture, stable water isotopes",

author = "Jessica Landgraf and D{\"o}rthe Tetzlaff and Songjun Wu and Jonas Freym{\"u}ller and Chris Soulsby",

note = "Funding Information: We acknowledge the BMBF (funding code 033W034A) which supported the stable isotope laboratory and the Open Access Publication Fund by IGB and the Leibniz Association's Open Access Publishing Fund. Funding for DT was also received through the Einstein Research Unit {\textquoteleft}Climate and Water under Change{\textquoteright} from the Einstein Foundation Berlin and Berlin University Alliance. Contributions from CS were supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the ISO-LAND project (Grant No. RPG 2018 375). The authors are grateful to Hauke D{\"a}mpfling, and Jan Christopher who were involved in the setup and maintenance of the monitoring systems of the DMC. We also thank David Dubbert for stable water isotope analysis and Christian Marx for creating an R script processing soil stable water isotope data. We thank the colleagues from the Finck Foundation (www.finck-stiftung.org) for the trustful collaboration, for providing access to the study sites (with different, also regenerative, multifunctional land uses) and for supporting our study with their experiences of climate and soil effects during the transition to regenerative land use models. We are thankful for the technical support by the WLV (Wasser und Landschaftspflegeverband Untere Spree). Further, we thank Aaron Andrew Smith for discussing several statistical approaches, and Jan Christopher and Ralf Parsche for their help in soil sampling.",

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AU - Tetzlaff, Dörthe

AU - Wu, Songjun

AU - Freymüller, Jonas

AU - Soulsby, Chris

N1 - Funding Information: We acknowledge the BMBF (funding code 033W034A) which supported the stable isotope laboratory and the Open Access Publication Fund by IGB and the Leibniz Association's Open Access Publishing Fund. Funding for DT was also received through the Einstein Research Unit ‘Climate and Water under Change’ from the Einstein Foundation Berlin and Berlin University Alliance. Contributions from CS were supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the ISO-LAND project (Grant No. RPG 2018 375). The authors are grateful to Hauke Dämpfling, and Jan Christopher who were involved in the setup and maintenance of the monitoring systems of the DMC. We also thank David Dubbert for stable water isotope analysis and Christian Marx for creating an R script processing soil stable water isotope data. We thank the colleagues from the Finck Foundation (www.finck-stiftung.org) for the trustful collaboration, for providing access to the study sites (with different, also regenerative, multifunctional land uses) and for supporting our study with their experiences of climate and soil effects during the transition to regenerative land use models. We are thankful for the technical support by the WLV (Wasser und Landschaftspflegeverband Untere Spree). Further, we thank Aaron Andrew Smith for discussing several statistical approaches, and Jan Christopher and Ralf Parsche for their help in soil sampling.

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N2 - Vegetation plays an essential role in water partitioning, as it strongly influences evapotranspiration, infiltration and water retention. To analyse the influence of vegetation on water partitioning under innovative land management strategies, we used stable water isotopes as natural tracers to monitor precipitation, soil water and groundwater fluxes over the growing season of 2021 (March–October). We selected eight plot sites with four contrasting land covers and soil types in the drought-sensitive Demnitzer Millcreek Catchment (DMC) in NE Germany. The land use types include forest, grassland, and arable with the latter being subdivided into conventional (e.g., crops) and innovative (e.g., agroforestry) sites. Two weather stations, a flux tower, and in situ soil moisture monitoring complemented our isotopic data with a hydroclimatic context. The year of 2021 had near-normal precipitation totals compared to the prolonged drought of 2018–20. Soil water storage was highest at the agricultural sites, while lowest at the forest, though this reflected both the influence of soil properties (as forests dominated sand soils while crops loam soils) and the greater evapotranspiration from forests. We also estimated soil water ages and found the greatest isotopic variability and fastest turnover of water in the upper soils of arable sites. The forest soil water had the most limited variability in isotopic composition and tended to be older, revealing lower levels of groundwater recharge. Conventional and innovative cropping sites were similar to each other, likely due to the early tree development stage in agroforestry schemes under the latter. Our investigation revealed the forest sites are potentially most vulnerable to limited water availability in the DMC and land use changes in agricultural land lacked major differences in ecohydrological fluxes over the study year. The study further underlines the need for long-term observations of recent adaptive land use changes and drought-sensitive vegetation to improve our understanding and evolve drought resilient land management strategies considering time lags in impacts and non-stationarity.

AB - Vegetation plays an essential role in water partitioning, as it strongly influences evapotranspiration, infiltration and water retention. To analyse the influence of vegetation on water partitioning under innovative land management strategies, we used stable water isotopes as natural tracers to monitor precipitation, soil water and groundwater fluxes over the growing season of 2021 (March–October). We selected eight plot sites with four contrasting land covers and soil types in the drought-sensitive Demnitzer Millcreek Catchment (DMC) in NE Germany. The land use types include forest, grassland, and arable with the latter being subdivided into conventional (e.g., crops) and innovative (e.g., agroforestry) sites. Two weather stations, a flux tower, and in situ soil moisture monitoring complemented our isotopic data with a hydroclimatic context. The year of 2021 had near-normal precipitation totals compared to the prolonged drought of 2018–20. Soil water storage was highest at the agricultural sites, while lowest at the forest, though this reflected both the influence of soil properties (as forests dominated sand soils while crops loam soils) and the greater evapotranspiration from forests. We also estimated soil water ages and found the greatest isotopic variability and fastest turnover of water in the upper soils of arable sites. The forest soil water had the most limited variability in isotopic composition and tended to be older, revealing lower levels of groundwater recharge. Conventional and innovative cropping sites were similar to each other, likely due to the early tree development stage in agroforestry schemes under the latter. Our investigation revealed the forest sites are potentially most vulnerable to limited water availability in the DMC and land use changes in agricultural land lacked major differences in ecohydrological fluxes over the study year. The study further underlines the need for long-term observations of recent adaptive land use changes and drought-sensitive vegetation to improve our understanding and evolve drought resilient land management strategies considering time lags in impacts and non-stationarity.

KW - drought

KW - ecohydrological partitioning

KW - ecohydrology

KW - intermittent streams

KW - land management

KW - land use

KW - soil moisture

KW - stable water isotopes

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SN - 0885-6087

VL - 36

JO - Hydrological Processes

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IS - 12

M1 - e14779

ER -

Using stable water isotopes to understand ecohydrological partitioning under contrasting land uses in a drought-sensitive rural, lowland catchment

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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