Ecohydrology of water-controlled ecosystems

Ecosystem dynamics in and and semiarid climates are strongly dependent on the soil water availability which, in turn, is the result of a number of complex and mutually interacting hydrologic processes. This motivates the development of a process-based framework for the analysis of the soil water content in the root zone at the daily time scale. This paper reviews the results that the authors have obtained using a probabilistic-mechanistic model of soil water balance for the characterization of the seasonal regimes of soil moisture with different combinations of climate, soil, and vegetation. Average seasonal soil water content and level-crossing statistics have been used to study conditions of water stress in vegetation. The same framework has been applied to the analysis of the impact of interannual climate fluctuations on the seasonal regime of soil moisture and water stress. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.