An updated treatment of soil texture and associated hydraulic properties in a global land modeling system

• Published in: Journal of advances in modeling earth systems Vol. 6; no. 4; pp. 957 - 979
• Main Authors: De Lannoy, Gabriëlle J. M., Koster, Randal D., Reichle, Rolf H., Mahanama, Sarith P. P., Liu, Qing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01-12-2014
• Subjects: Catchment area; Composition; Earth; Frameworks; global land surface modeling; Hydraulic properties; Hydraulics; Hydrology; Land surface models; Modelling; organic carbon; Parameters; Properties; Satellite data; Satellites; Simulation; Soil; soil hydraulic parameters; Soil moisture; Soil properties; Soil texture; Soil treatment; Soils; Texture
• ISSN: 1942-2466; 1942-2466
• DOI: 10.1002/2014MS000330

The advent of new data sets describing soil texture and associated soil properties offers the promise of improved hydrological simulation. Here we describe the composition of a new soil texture data set and its implementation into a specific land surface modeling system, namely, the Catchment land surface model (LSM) of the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System version 5 (GEOS‐5) modeling and assimilation framework. First, global soil texture composites are generated using data from the Harmonized World Soil Database version 1.21 (HWSD1.21) and the State Soil Geographic (STATSGO2) project, with explicit consideration of different levels of organic material. Then, the LSM's soil parameters are upgraded using the new texture data, with hydraulic parameters derived for the more extensive set of texture classes using pedotransfer functions. Other changes to the LSM parameters are included to further support simulations at increasingly fine resolutions. A suite of simulations with the original and new parameter versions shows modest yet significant improvements in the Catchment LSM's simulation of soil moisture and surface hydrological fluxes. The revised LSM parameters will be used for the forthcoming Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) soil moisture assimilation product.
Key Points
Generated new global composite database of soil mineral and organic texture
Derived soil hydraulic parameters for global land model simulations
Reduced bias of simulated soil moisture versus in situ and satellite data