Soil water status and physical and biogeochemical properties are related to soil structure and texture among. In many cases, these relationships are not easily identifiable but are often obscured through different relationship affecting a variable at different scales, or the same process relationship is active at different scales. As an extreme case, one can imagine that two variables are positively related at one scale, and negatively related at another scale, resulting in null relationship as a general outcome. This behavior is rather the rule than the exception in agricultural ecosystems where different processes overlay each other and are active at different scales. The objective of this study is to dis-entangle scale components of soil water time series in different soil layers and their relationship over time with wavelet analysis. Moreover, in a spatial layout, the empirical mode decomposition should reveal at what scales and what intensity soil properties were related to near-saturated hydraulic conductivity.
Results/Conclusions
From time series and similar or dissimilar behavior of soil water status at different soil depths, soil water response to rainfall can be distinguished for different zones of soil type in the field. Spatial variability of hydraulic conductivity is obviously caused by soil structural parameters that act at different scales but a general rule for such behavior could not yet be identified.