Responses of soil water storage and crop water use efficiency to changing climatic conditions: a lysimeter-based space-for-time approach

Abstract. Future crop production will be affected by climatic changes. In several regions, the projected changes in total rainfall and seasonal rainfall patterns will lead to lower soil water storage (SWS), which in turn affects crop water uptake, crop yield, water use efficiency (WUE), grain quality and groundwater recharge. Effects of climate change on those variables depend on the soil properties and were often estimated based on model simulations. The objective of this study was to investigate the response of key variables in four different soils and for two different climates in Germany with a different aridity index (AI): 1.09 for the wetter (range: 0.82 to 1.29) and 1.57 for the drier (range: 1.19 to 1.77) climate. This is done by using high-precision weighable lysimeters. According to a “space-for-time” (SFT) concept, intact soil monoliths that were moved to sites with contrasting climatic conditions have been monitored from April 2011 until December 2017. Evapotranspiration (ET) was lower for the same soil under the relatively drier climate, whereas crop yield was significantly higher, without affecting grain quality. Especially “non-productive” water losses (evapotranspiration out of the main growing period) were lower, which led to a more efficient crop water use in the drier climate. A characteristic decrease of the SWS for soils with a finer texture was observed after a longer drought period under a drier climate. The reduced SWS after the drought remained until the end of the observation period which demonstrates carry-over of drought from one growing season to another and the overall long-term effects of single drought events. In the relatively drier climate, water flow at the soil profile bottom showed a small net upward flux over the entire monitoring period as compared to downward fluxes (groundwater recharge) or drainage in the relatively wetter climate and larger recharge rates in the coarser- as compared to finer-textured soils. The large variability of recharge from year to year and the long-lasting effects of drought periods on the SWS imply that long-term monitoring of soil water balance components is necessary to obtain representative estimates. Results confirmed a more efficient crop water use under less-plant-available soil moisture conditions. Long-term effects of changing climatic conditions on the SWS and ecosystem productivity should be considered when trying to develop adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector.

[1]  A. Hartemink,et al.  Spatial-temporal analysis of soil water storage and deep drainage under irrigated potatoes in the Central Sands of Wisconsin, USA , 2019, Agricultural Water Management.

[2]  H. Vereecken,et al.  Quantification and Prediction of Nighttime Evapotranspiration for Two Distinct Grassland Ecosystems , 2019, Water Resources Research.

[3]  J. Hatfield,et al.  Water-Use Efficiency: Advances and Challenges in a Changing Climate , 2019, Front. Plant Sci..

[4]  C. Müller,et al.  Climate change impact and adaptation for wheat protein , 2018, Global change biology.

[5]  M. Trnka,et al.  The response of process-based agro-ecosystem models to within-field variability in site conditions , 2018, Field Crops Research.

[6]  Cassandra J. Wilson,et al.  Climate-induced changes in continental-scale soil macroporosity may intensify water cycle , 2018, Nature.

[7]  Ian J. Wang,et al.  The value of space‐for‐time substitution for studying fine‐scale microevolutionary processes , 2018 .

[8]  Lianhai Wu,et al.  Deep soil water storage varies with vegetation type and rainfall amount in the Loess Plateau of China , 2018, Scientific Reports.

[9]  H. Vereecken,et al.  Determining dew and hoar frost formation for a low mountain range and alpine grassland site by weighable lysimeter , 2018, Journal of Hydrology.

[10]  A. Haines,et al.  Effect of environmental changes on vegetable and legume yields and nutritional quality , 2018, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[11]  Gilles Lemaire,et al.  Water use efficiency in perennial forage species: Interactions between nitrogen nutrition and water deficit , 2018, Field Crops Research.

[12]  Atul K. Jain,et al.  Response of Water Use Efficiency to Global Environmental Change Based on Output From Terrestrial Biosphere Models , 2017 .

[13]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  Anthropogenic climate change detected in European renewable freshwater resources , 2017 .

[14]  H. Gerke,et al.  Scales of Water Retention Dynamics Observed in Eroded Luvisols from an Arable Postglacial Soil Landscape , 2017 .

[15]  Robert S. Nuske,et al.  Tree Species Selection in the Face of Drought Risk—Uncertainty in Forest Planning , 2017 .

[16]  C. Müller,et al.  Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates , 2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[17]  S. Goetz,et al.  Vulnerability of eastern US tree species to climate change , 2017, Global change biology.

[18]  C. Müller,et al.  Understanding the weather signal in national crop‐yield variability , 2017 .

[19]  P. Reich,et al.  Experimental and observational studies find contrasting responses of soil nutrients to climate change , 2017, eLife.

[20]  P. Mérel,et al.  Negative impacts of climate change on cereal yields: statistical evidence from France , 2017 .

[21]  G. Fitzgerald,et al.  Models of grain quality in wheat—A review , 2017 .

[22]  Juraj Balkovic,et al.  Consistent negative response of US crops to high temperatures in observations and crop models , 2017, Nature Communications.

[23]  P. Ciais,et al.  Field warming experiments shed light on the wheat yield response to temperature in China , 2016, Nature Communications.

[24]  E. Borg,et al.  TERENO-SOILCan: a lysimeter-network in Germany observing soil processes and plant diversity influenced by climate change , 2016, Environmental Earth Sciences.

[25]  C. Prudhomme,et al.  The European 2015 drought from a hydrological perspective , 2016 .

[26]  H. Vereecken,et al.  How to Control the Lysimeter Bottom Boundary to Investigate the Effect of Climate Change on Soil Processes? , 2016 .

[27]  Z. Nan,et al.  Determining water use efficiency for wheat and cotton: A meta-regression analysis , 2016 .

[28]  Patrick Scholz,et al.  The European 2015 drought from a climatological perspective , 2016 .

[29]  Hans-Jörg Vogel,et al.  Modeling Soil Processes: Review, Key Challenges, and New Perspectives , 2016 .

[30]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  Anthropogenic climate change affects meteorological drought risk in Europe , 2016 .

[31]  G. O'Leary,et al.  Water use efficiency and crop water balance of rainfed wheat in a semi-arid environment: sensitivity of future changes to projected climate changes and soil type , 2016, Theoretical and Applied Climatology.

[32]  Davey L. Jones,et al.  Experimental evidence for drought induced alternative stable states of soil moisture , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[33]  Alfred E. Hartemink,et al.  Linking soils to ecosystem services — A global review , 2016 .

[34]  Guangsheng Zhou,et al.  The yield of mechanically harvested rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) can be increased by optimum plant density and row spacing , 2015, Scientific Reports.

[35]  H. Tian,et al.  Responses of Crop Water Use Efficiency to Climate Change and Agronomic Measures in the Semiarid Area of Northern China , 2015, PloS one.

[36]  J. Famiglietti,et al.  Increases in the annual range of soil water storage at northern middle and high latitudes under global warming , 2015 .

[37]  Jeffrey W. White,et al.  Rising Temperatures Reduce Global Wheat Production , 2015 .

[38]  D. Wichelns.  Do Estimates of Water Productivity Enhance Understanding of Farm-Level Water Management? , 2014 .

[39]  Fengju Zheng,et al.  Impact of climate change on water use efficiency by wheat, potato and corn in semiarid areas of China , 2013 .

[40]  I. Merbach,et al.  Long-term fertilization effects on crop yields, soil fertility and sustainability in the Static Fertilization Experiment Bad Lauchstädt under climatic conditions 2001–2010 , 2013 .

[41]  Peter A. Troch,et al.  Climate-vegetation-soil interactions and long-term hydrologic partitioning: signatures of catchment co-evolution , 2013, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

[42]  David B. Lobell,et al.  Global crop exposure to critical high temperatures in the reproductive period: historical trends and future projections , 2013 .

[43]  Simon Ferrier,et al.  Space can substitute for time in predicting climate-change effects on biodiversity , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[44]  Olaf Kolditz,et al.  TEODOOR: a distributed geodata infrastructure for terrestrial observation data , 2013, Environmental Earth Sciences.

[45]  M. S. Moran,et al.  Ecosystem resilience despite large-scale altered hydroclimatic conditions , 2013, Nature.

[46]  M. Ploeg,et al.  Water storage change estimation from in situ shrinkage measurements of clay soils , 2012 .

[47]  D. Lobell,et al.  The Influence of Climate Change on Global Crop Productivity1 , 2012, Plant Physiology.

[48]  H. Gerke,et al.  Hydraulic properties of characteristic horizons depending on relief position and structure in a hummocky glacial soil landscape , 2012 .

[49]  S. Niu,et al.  Water‐use efficiency in response to climate change: from leaf to ecosystem in a temperate steppe , 2011 .

[50]  Mathieu Javaux,et al.  Using Pedotransfer Functions to Estimate the van Genuchten–Mualem Soil Hydraulic Properties: A Review , 2010 .

[51]  Wenzhao Liu,et al.  Water-deficit and high temperature affected water use efficiency and arabinoxylan concentration in spring wheat , 2010 .

[52]  R. Meissner,et al.  Effect of vegetation type and growth stage on dewfall, determined with high precision weighing lysimeters at a site in northern Germany , 2009 .

[53]  J. A. Tolk,et al.  Transpiration and Yield Relationships of Grain Sorghum Grown in a Field Environment , 2009 .

[54]  Michael Sommer,et al.  Modelling soil landscape genesis — A “time split” approach for hummocky agricultural landscapes , 2008 .

[55]  N. Katerji,et al.  Water use efficiency of crops cultivated in the Mediterranean region: Review and analysis , 2008 .

[56]  M. Sebastià,et al.  Plant guilds drive biomass response to global warming and water availability in subalpine grassland , 2006 .

[57]  Nurit Agam,et al.  Dew formation and water vapor adsorption in semi-arid environments : A review , 2006 .

[58]  L. S. Pereira,et al.  A recommendation on standardized surface resistance for hourly calculation of reference ETo by the FAO56 Penman-Monteith method , 2006 .

[59]  Kelly K. Caylor,et al.  Dynamic response of grass cover to rainfall variability: implications for the function and persistence of savanna ecosystems , 2005 .

[60]  K. Eckhardt,et al.  Plant parameter values for models in temperate climates , 2003 .

[61]  Bjarne Joernsgaard,et al.  Intra-field yield variation over crops and years , 2003 .

[62]  J. Porter,et al.  Effects of elevated CO2 and drought on wheat: testing crop simulation models for different experimental and climatic conditions , 2002 .

[63]  P. Coley,et al.  The effects of weather on fungal abundance and richness among 25 communities in the Intermountain West , 2002, BMC Ecology.

[64]  Dong Zhang,et al.  The variability in soil water storage on the loess hillslopes in China and its estimation , 2019, CATENA.

[65]  H. Vereecken,et al.  Inverse Estimation of Soil Hydraulic and Transport Parameters of Layered Soils from Water Stable Isotope and Lysimeter Data , 2018 .

[66]  Roland Baatz,et al.  The TERENO‐Rur Hydrological Observatory: A Multiscale Multi‐Compartment Research Platform for the Advancement of Hydrological Science , 2018 .

[67]  O. Bens,et al.  Water balance and leaching of dissolved organic and inorganic carbon of eroded Luvisols using high precision weighing lysimeters , 2017 .

[68]  Hans-Jörg Vogel,et al.  The Bode hydrological observatory: a platform for integrated, interdisciplinary hydro-ecological research within the TERENO Harz/Central German Lowland Observatory , 2016, Environmental Earth Sciences.

[69]  I. Bagheri,et al.  Evaluation of a rice reaper used for rapeseed harvesting. , 2008 .

[70]  C. Stöckle,et al.  Estimating grain and straw nitrogen concentration in grain crops based on aboveground nitrogen concentration and harvest index , 2007 .

[71]  N. Agama,et al.  Dew formation and water vapor adsorption in semi-arid environments — A review , 2006 .

[72]  H. Gerke,et al.  Composition of Organic Matter Fractions for Explaining Wettability of Three Forest Soils , 2005 .

[73]  Steward T. A. Pickett,et al.  Space-for-Time Substitution as an Alternative to Long-Term Studies , 1989 .