On the Critical Behaviour of Observed and Simulated Spatial Soil Moisture Fields during SGP97

The aircraft-based ESTAR soil moisture fields from the Southern Great Plains 1997 (SGP97) Hydrology Experiment are compared to the simulated ones obtained by Bertoldi et al. [1] with the GEOtop model [2], with a particular focus on their capability in capturing the critical point behaviour in their space-time dynamics (see [3]). The critical point behaviour should denote the transition of soil moisture spatial patterns from an unorganized to organized appearance, as conditions become wetter. The study region is the Little Washita watershed, located in the southwest Oklahoma, in the Southern Great Plains region of the USA. The case study takes place from June 27 to July 16 and encompasses wetting and drying cycles allowing for exploring the behaviour under transient conditions. Results show that the critical probability value is 0.85 for GEOtop, and 0.80 for ESTAR. The GEOtop patterns appear more fragmented, being more reluctant to organization, as confirmed by the higher value of critical probability. Such behaviour is probably inherited by the model’s parameterization: land use and soil classes impose additional spatial structures to those related to the meteorological forcings and the hillslope morphology, driving to higher degrees of heterogeneity.