Erwin Zehe, Thomas Gräff, Markus Morgner, Andreas Bauer, Axel Bronstert

• This study presents an application of an innovative sampling strategy to assess soil moisture dynamics in a headwater of the Weißeritz in the German eastern Ore Mountains. A grassland site and a forested site were instrumented with two Spatial TDR clusters (STDR) that consist of 39 and 32 coated TDR probes of 60 cm length. Distributed time series of vertically averaged soil moisture data from both sites/ensembles were analyzed by statistical and geostatistical methods. Spatial variability and the spatial mean at the forested site were larger than at the grassland site. Furthermore, clustering of TDR probes in combination with long-term monitoring allowed identification of average spatial covariance structures at the small field scale for different wetness states. The correlation length of soil water content as well as the sill to nugget ratio at the grassland site increased with increasing average wetness and but, in contrast, were constant at the forested site. As soil properties at both the forested and grassland sites are extremelyThis study presents an application of an innovative sampling strategy to assess soil moisture dynamics in a headwater of the Weißeritz in the German eastern Ore Mountains. A grassland site and a forested site were instrumented with two Spatial TDR clusters (STDR) that consist of 39 and 32 coated TDR probes of 60 cm length. Distributed time series of vertically averaged soil moisture data from both sites/ensembles were analyzed by statistical and geostatistical methods. Spatial variability and the spatial mean at the forested site were larger than at the grassland site. Furthermore, clustering of TDR probes in combination with long-term monitoring allowed identification of average spatial covariance structures at the small field scale for different wetness states. The correlation length of soil water content as well as the sill to nugget ratio at the grassland site increased with increasing average wetness and but, in contrast, were constant at the forested site. As soil properties at both the forested and grassland sites are extremely variable, this suggests that the correlation structure at the forested site is dominated by the pattern of throughfall and interception. We also found a strong correlation between average soil moisture dynamics and runoff coefficients of rainfall-runoff events observed at gauge Rehefeld, which explains almost as much variability in the runoff coefficients as pre-event discharge. By combining these results with a recession analysis we derived a first conceptual model of the dominant runoff mechanisms operating in this catchment. Finally, long term simulations with a physically based hydrological model were in good/acceptable accordance with the time series of spatial average soil water content observed at the forested site and the grassland site, respectively. Both simulations used a homogeneous soil setup that closely reproduces observed average soil conditions observed at the field sites. This corroborates the proposed sampling strategy of clustering TDR probes in typical functional units is a promising technique to explore the soil moisture control on runoff generation. Long term monitoring of such sites could maybe yield valuable information for flood warning. The sampling strategy helps furthermore to unravel different types of soil moisture variability.…