WETLAND AND WATER RESOURCE MODELING AND ASSESSMENT: A Watershed Perspective - Chapter 6 docx

6 Intra-Annual Distribution Characteristics of the Water Budget in the Hilly Region of Red Soil in Northeast Jiangxi Province, China Junfeng Dai, Jiazhou Chen, Yuanlai Cui, and Yuanqiu

6

Intra-Annual Distribution Characteristics of the

Water Budget in the

Hilly Region of Red Soil

in Northeast Jiangxi

Province, China

Junfeng Dai, Jiazhou Chen, Yuanlai Cui, and

Yuanqiu He

6.1 INTRODUCTION

In northeast Jiangxi Province, water balance is important for water resource utiliza-tion and agricultural regionalizautiliza-tion In this region, the red soil is affected by the subtropical monsoon climate in which rainfall is abundant, but unevenly distributed (Chen and Zhang 2002) The high intensity of rainfall leads to water loss during the rainy season In addition, the time difference between the distribution of the rain-fall and its evaporation causes seasonal drought Studying the characteristics of the intra-annual distribution of the water budget can help discover the occurrence rules

of seasonal drought in the region and assist in adopting measures to increase water use efficiency (Huang et al 2004)

Existing literature has examined aspects of the water problem in red soil areas Yao (1996) described the water problem including seasonal drought and water stor-age capacity in a red soil area Wang et al (1996) analyzed the variations in rainfall, evaporation, and water storage and supply in low, hilly red soil areas Xie et al (2000) studied the status of water resources in 1,000-m2 area using the runoff plot, neutron probe, and tensiometer However, the water budget in the hilly region of red soil has rarely been investigated systematically It is difficult to obtain or measure percolation, evapotranspiration, and runoff accurately in the large- to medium-scale basin, and even in the small-scale watershed Therefore, water budget in a scale larger than a field

is not easily studied using traditional methods Model simulation is a viable option for calculating the output of the water budget at a variety of scales However, such studies

have rarely been undertaken in the red soil areas of China SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) (Arnold et al 1998) is a distributed hydrological model based on physical mechanisms Although SWAT is designed to predict the impact of manage-ment on water, sedimanage-ment, and agricultural chemical yields in large ungauged basins, it

is also valid in small catchments (Chanasyk et al 2003, Mapfumo et al 2004)

In this study, characteristics of intra-annual distribution of water balance are investigated using runoff catchments and the SWAT99.2 model in order to provide appropriate directions for effective management and use of water resources in the hilly region of red soil

6.2 BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MODEL

SWAT is a distributed and continuous time model developed by Dr Jeff Arnold for the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service It has undergone several versions with different interfaces In this article, the results of water budget are calculated using the Windows interface for SWAT99.2

The SWAT model consists of three major components: sub-basin, reservoir routing, and channel routing The basin component consists of eight main sub-components defined as hydrology, weather, sedimentation, soil temperature, crop growth, nutrients, agricultural management, and pesticides The following is a brief description of the main hydrology subcomponent For a complete description, see Arnold et al (1999)

SWAT simulates surface runoff volumes using daily rainfall amounts Surface runoff volume is computed using a modification of the SCS (Soil Conservation Ser-vice) curve number method (USDA Soil Conservation Service 1972), and canopy storage is taken into account in the surface runoff calculations The percolation com-ponent of SWAT uses a storage routing technique to predict flow through each soil layer in the root zone Percolation occurs when the field capacity of a soil layer is exceeded and the layer below is not saturated The flow rate is governed by the satu-rated conductivity of the soil layer The model computes evaporation from soils and plants separately as described by Ritchie (1972) Potential soil water evaporation is estimated as a function of potential evapotranspiration and leaf area index Actual soil water evaporation is estimated by using exponential functions of soil depth and water content Plant transpiration is simulated as a linear function of potential evapotranspiration and leaf area index The model offers three options for estimat-ing potential evapotranspiration: Hargreaves, Priestley-Taylor, and Penman-Monte-ith SWAT utilizes a simplification of the EPIC crop model (Williams et al 1984) to simulate all types of land covers The model is able to differentiate between annual and perennial plants

6.3 SITE SELECTION AND MODEL CALIBRATION

The study area is located in the artificial forest and grass catchments of the Experi-ment Station of Red Earth Ecology, Chinese Academy of Science, Yingtan, Jiangxi Province (Figure 6.1)

The catchments are at an altitude of 48 to 54 meters and the groundwater table

is low The catchments were established in 1988 and were isolated by concrete 5 cm wide and 1 m deep The four catchments are relatively dependent Consequently, each catchment is considered a watershed in the model and is not partitioned into sub-basins Water budget in each catchment is calculated respectively

An observation house with a runoff pool was constructed at the exit of every catchment, and a water level gauge was installed in the runoff pool Surface runoff

of catchments could be calculated through the continuous recording of the water level change

The details of the four catchments are as follows: (1) Natural grass catchment:

the vegetation recovered naturally after the original Pinus massoniana was cut; (2) Evergreen broad-leaved forest catchment: Schima Superba and C fissa were planted after the Pinus massoniana was cut; (3) Mixed forest catchment: Q chenil and Les-pedeza bicolor were planted in the original Pinus massonianas; (4) Coniferous for-est catchment: the original Pinus massoniana forfor-estland remains.

The model inputs require climate, soil, land use, and vegetation data There is a mete-orological observation station near the forest and grass catchments Daily precipita-tion and maximum and minimum air temperature observaprecipita-tions from 2000 to 2001 are available, and they are input directly into the SWAT model In the SWAT99.2 model with Windows interface, daily solar radiation, wind speed, and relative humid-ity are generated from average monthly values based on the historical statistical data These statistics are generated using a weather generator module in SWAT Thirteen years of observational data have been used to generate these statistics

The soil type of the catchments is red soil derived from the quaternary red clay The properties of each soil layer are given inTable 6.1

Experiment Station of Red Earth Ecology, Yiangtan, Jiangxi, China

N

Forest and Grass Catchments

FIGURE 6.1 Schematic map of the study area in China

Watershed attributes and vegetation characteristics of catchments are gained with investigation (Table 6.2) For the forest and grass catchments, a wet and a dry year (2000 and 2001) of daily runoff are obtained from the Experiment Station of Red Earth Ecology to calibrate and validate the model

The SWAT model is calibrated and validated against the observed runoff In this

study, the SCS curve number (CN 2) and soil evaporation compensation factor (ESCO)

are adjusted until surface runoff is acceptable CN 2 is a function of the soil’s perme-ability, land use, and antecedent soil water conditions The parameter calibration of the model is displayed inTable 6.3

The correlation coefficient (R 2 ) and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (E ns) (Saleh et al 2000) are used to evaluate the variance between observed and simulated values Comparing simulated daily and monthly surface runoff to observations, model effi-ciency is achieved (Table 6.4) It shows that the simulation model can be used as an analytical tool for calculating the hydrological cycle in a hilly region of red soil

TABLE 6.1

Soil properties of forest and grass catchments.

Soil depth (mm) Parameter G Fb Fm Fc

Organic carbon content (%) 0.55 0 60 0.58 0.59 Saturated conductivity (mm/h) 21.10 35.13 32.12 27.92 Available water capacity (mm/mm) 0.09 0.10 0.09 0.09

Organic carbon content (%) 0.30 0 39 0.38 0.37 Saturated conductivity (mm/h) 4.48 8.78 6.78 3.80 Available water capacity (mm/mm) 0.10 0.08 0.09 0.09

Organic carbon content (%) 0.20 0 23 0.23 0.23 Saturated conductivity (mm/h) 1.24 2.76 1.72 1.08 Available water capacity (mm/mm) 0.08 0.08 0.07 0.08

Note: G: natural grass; Fb: broad-leaved forest; Fm: mixed forest; Fc: coniferous forest.

6.4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The daily rainfall record over a period of two years (Figure 6.2) indicates that the rainfall in the red soil area is uneven in its intra-annual distribution

The annual rainfall is heavy in the red soil area with 1,912.1 mm falling in 2000 and 1,482.4 mm for 2001 The daily rainfall record also shows that the heaviest rains fall from April to July The April to June 2000 rainfall amounts account for about

TABLE 6.2

Watershed attributes of forest and grass catchments.

Parameter G Fb Fm Fc

Surface litter (kg/hm 2 ) 172.1 5360.0 3294.4 1492.5

TABLE 6.3

Parameter calibration of model.

Parameter Original Calibrated Original Calibrated Original Calibrated Original Calibrated

TABLE 6.4

Evaluation of simulation efficiency.

Daily Monthly Daily Monthly Daily Monthly Daily Monthly

50.33% of annual total rainfall High rainfall intensity is frequently observed dur-ing the rainy season (April to June) in the red soil areas Over the two-year period, there were 10 days where the daily rainfall exceeded 50 mm, totaling 841.5 mm and representing 24.8% of the two-year total In addition, 47.8% of the two-year rainfall occurs within a 38-day period, for a rain intensity of 42.7 mm d−1 The rainfall pat-tern in the red soil area is hazardous to water resource utilization and crop growth

Daily observed and simulated surface runoffs are displayed in Figure 6.3 Both observed data and simulation results indicate that surface runoff scarcely takes place when the daily rainfall is less than 10 mm The surface runoff can be observed when the daily rainfall is above 10–15 mm The results show that temporal change

of rainfall led to the variation of the surface runoff Compared with the 2000 data, rainfall in 2001 decreased 22.74%, and the surface runoff of the four catchments was reduced between 62.11% and 74.04% Furthermore, the surface runoff often occurs in the rainy season The concentrated rainfall pattern induces heavy runoff For instance, the rate of three months (April to June) surface runoff of G, Fb, Fm and

Fc is 69.21%, 80.02%, 73.72%, and 69.41%, respectively, of the annual 2000 amount Also, the surface runoff scarcely occurs in January, February, and December due to the shortage of rainfall

In addition, the average annual runoff coefficient of the forest and grass catch-ments is 0.14, which is different from the value of 0.1 in long-term cultivated red soils (Yang et al 1993), and which also differs from the value ranging from 0.55 to 0.61 in the uncultivated or newly cultivated uplands of red soils (Ju and Wu 1995) These reveal that runoff in the red soil uplands changes remarkably with different types of utilization and vegetation

Potential evapotranspiration is estimated using the Penman–Monteith equation in this article Compared with the observed daily water surface evaporation, the calculated daily evapotranspiration in the forest and grass catchments is reasonable (Figure 6.4) Evapotranspiration mainly concentrates from April to August, especially between June and August, because of the ample soil water and high temperature Between

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FIGURE 6.2 Daily rainfall in the study area

June and August 2000, the evapotranspiration of the catchments accounted for 45.69

to 50.87% of the annual total

Rainfall decreases sharply after August, but the actual evapotranspiration loss

is still large The time period of maximum evapotranspiration is not synchronous with that of maximum rainfall, which is the essential intra-annual distribution of the water budget in the red soil areas











 









   





 









   





 









   





 

FIGURE 6.3 Daily observed and simulated surface runoff for 2000 and 2001

In addition, the annual difference in evapotranspiration of forest and grass eco-systems is small The results show that the evapotranspiration decreases less with rainfall than with surface runoff with rainfall For instance, comparing 2001 data with that of 2000, rainfall decreases 22.47%, runoff of broad-leaved forest reduces 75.30% accordingly, but evapotranspiration only decreases 7.32%

Figure 6.5 shows that percolation from the root zone of forestland and grassland often occurs in the rainy season The excessive rainfall usually induces large daily percolation The rate of four months’ (March to June) percolation is 67.00 to 79.35%

of the annual rainfall over a period of two years Percolation from the root zone scarcely occurs the rest of the year (July to October) due to insufficient rainfall and strong evapotranspiration As a consequence of unequal rainfall, the rate of 2001 percolation of catchments is between 75.09 and 81.54% of the 2000 rate In addition, the permeability of forest and grass catchments in red soil is better than that in bar-ren land in this area This reveals that vegetation recovery in the red soil area can assist soil infiltration and water resource utilization

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G Fb Fm Fc Water surface evaporation

FIGURE 6.4 Simulated daily evapotranspirations in the forest and grass catchments

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FIGURE 6.5 Simulated daily percolations from the root zone in forest and grass catchments.

6.4.5 WATER SURPLUS-DEFICIT STATUS

In the study area, rainfall is the water input, and water outputs include surface runoff, percolation, and evapotranspiration The water surplus-deficit status in the catchments

is shown in Figure 6.6 Water deficits mainly occur from June to September, but in other months, water input is generally larger than water output The results indicate that annual change of soil water storage accounts for about 1.0% of rainfall

From February to April, increasing rainfall and weak evaporation potential con-tribute to the increase in soil water storage, although a water deficit can exist From May to September, the soil water storage evinces a gradual decreasing trend Espe-cially from July to September, the forestlands have a serious deficit of soil water due to lack of rainfall and strong evaporation potential, and the depleted water is recharged by the soil water storage Furthermore, in the autumn sowing period, a serious water shortage also occurs on farmland This conflict is detrimental to water utilization and crop growth From October to the following February, the soil water storage gradually reaches the proper status As a whole, the annual change of soil water storage is quite small This indicates that the water budget in the hilly region

of red soil has a dynamic balance

The results also show that the evapotranspiration in forest and grass catch-ments accounts for a majority of the water output in the red soil area The pro-portion between annual evapotranspiration and rainfall is above 0.5 in forestlands, and approximately 0.4 in the grass catchment Furthermore, in the forest and grass catchments where vegetation has grown for twelve years or more, percolation from the root zone is bigger than surface runoff, and the condition seems more remarkable

in the wet year

6.5 CONCLUSIONS

The main characteristics of the water budget in a hilly region of red soil investigated with runoff catchments and model simulation revealed the following information The temporal distribution of rainfall is uneven in red soil areas High rain-fall intensity is frequently observed during the rainy season (April to June), which

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FIGURE 6.6 Simulated daily water surplus-deficit status of forest and grass catchments

induces heavy runoff Maximum evapotranspiration occurs from July to September, which is not synchronous with maximum rainfall This conflict is detrimental to water utilization In the forest and grasslands where vegetation has grown for twelve years or more, evapotranspiration is the largest water loss component, followed by percolation, and then surface runoff This differs from the long-term cultivated lands, where percolation is the largest water loss component, and also from the uncultivated uplands, where runoff is the largest component

The variation in weather conditions, especially rainfall, is the most important factor that results in the difference of water balance in the red soil area Of the water outputs, the surface runoff and percolation are most affected by rainfall, followed

by evapotranspiration, and the annual fluctuation of the soil water storage is very small

According to the intra-annual distribution characteristics of the water bud-get in the red soil, important measures such as storing rainfall through the rainy season, constructing the irrigation works, agroforestry system or silvopastoral system techniques, and agricultural water-saving techniques should be taken to increase the water use efficiency and relieve the seasonal drought in the hilly red soil region

This study also confirms that the modeling tool is an effective method for inves-tigating the water balance of the hilly red soil region The modeling tool is demon-strated in the forest and grass catchments in this research, but it could be adapted

to the cropland catchments or large-scale watersheds in the red soil areas of China The advantages of the modeling tool are not limited to its capability to simulate hydrological processes Many management scenarios, such as fertilization, irriga-tion, water deficits, and population control, could also be analyzed

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No 40301019) and Chinese Ministry of Education Project (No NCET-04-0664)

REFERENCES

Arnold, J G., R Srinivasan, R S Muttiah, and J R Williams 1998 Large area hydrologic

modeling and assessment Part I, model development Journal of the American Water

Resource Association 34(1):73–89.

Arnold, J G., J R Williams, R Srinivasan, and K W King 1999 Soil and water assessment tool theoretical documentation (version 99.2) http://www.brc.tamus.edu/swat

Chanasyk, D S., E Mapfumo, and W Willms 2003 Quantification and simulation of

sur-face runoff from fescue grassland watersheds Agricultural Water Management, no

59: 137–153

Chen, Z F., and X X Zhang 2002 Effect of seasonal drought on forestry and fruit

indus-try at red soil region in southern China [in Chinese] Agro-environmental Protection

21(3):241–244

Huang, D Y., K L Wang, M Huang, H S Chen, J S Wu, G P Zhang, and T B Peng 2004 Seasonal drought problems in the hilly, red soil region of the middle subtropical zone

of China [in Chinese] Acta Ecologica Sinica 24(11): 2516–2523.

FIGURE 6. 6 Simulated daily water surplus-deficit status of forest and grass catchments

induces