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  • Review Article
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Soil hydrology in the Earth system

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 3, pages 573–587 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Soil hydrological processes (SHP) support ecosystems, modulate the impact of climate change on terrestrial systems and control feedback mechanisms between water, energy and biogeochemical cycles. However, land-use changes and extreme events are increasingly impacting these processes. In this Review, we describe SHP across scales and examine their links with soil properties, ecosystem processes and climate. Soil structure influences SHP such as infiltration, soil water redistribution and root water uptake on small scales. On local scales, SHP are driven by root water uptake, vegetation and groundwater dynamics. Regionally, SHP are impacted by extreme events such as droughts, floods, heatwaves and land-use change; however, antecedent and current SHP partially determine the broader effects of extreme events. Emerging technologies such as wireless and automated sensing, soil moisture observation through novel synthetic aperture radars satellites, big data analysis and machine learning approaches offer unique opportunities to advance soil hydrology. These advances, in tandem with the inclusion of more key soil types and properties in models, will be pivotal in predicting the role of SHP during global change.

Key points

  • Local-scale soil hydrological processes regulate climatic effects on the global terrestrial water cycle by controlling energy and greenhouse gas fluxes.

  • Regional-scale soil hydrology is modulated by land-use and climate-change effects on soil structure.

  • Global-scale soil hydrology benefits from emerging technologies and big data analysis, but still faces parameterization challenges related to soil properties, such as soil structure and soil hydraulic parameters.

  • Processes such as freeze-thawing, cryoturbation, peat degradation, and swelling and shrinking control soil hydraulic parameters in distinct soil groups, such as permafrost and peat soils.

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Fig. 1: The soil hydrological system from the pore to the global scales.
Fig. 2: The soil structure formation and timescales.
Fig. 3: The pedotransfer functions concept.
Fig. 4: Effect of soil properties and moisture status on water fluxes in the soil–plant system.
Fig. 5: Cyber-physical infrastructures for soil hydrology.

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Acknowledgements

W.A., N.B., C.M., J.V. and H.V. acknowledge support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, EXC-2070 - 390732324 (PhenoRob). W.A., H.B., N.B., C.M., J.V. and H.V. acknowledge support from the Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) funded by the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Germany. The authors were also supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – SFB 1502/1-2022 - Projektnummer 450058266.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agrosphere Institute, IBG-3, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany

    Harry Vereecken, Heye Bogena, Nicolas Brüggemann, Carsten Montzka, Jan Vanderborght & Mathieu Javaux

  2. Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES)-Soil Science and Soil Ecology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Wulf Amelung & Sara L. Bauke

  3. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Michel Bechtold

  4. Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources, Technische Universitat Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Günter Blöschl

  5. Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Andrea Carminati & Dani Or

  6. Earth and Life Institute, Environmental Sciences, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Mathieu Javaux

  7. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Alexandra G. Konings

  8. Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Jürgen Kusche

  9. Institut für Strömungsmechanik und Umweltphysik im Bauwesen, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Insa Neuweiler

  10. Division of Hydrologic Sciences, Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, USA

    Dani Or

  11. Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing, TU Delft, Delft, Netherlands

    Susan Steele-Dunne

  12. Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Anne Verhoef

  13. Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Michael Young

  14. School of Earth System Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Yonggen Zhang

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Contributions

H.V., W.A., S.L.B., H.B., N.B., C.M. and J.V. led the conceptualization, writing and figure drafting. D.O., M.B., G.B., A.C., A.G.K., J.K., I.N., S.S.-D., A.V., M.Y. and Y.Z. supported in equal parts the conceptualization, writing and figure drafting.

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Correspondence to Harry Vereecken.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Jan Hopmans, Carlos Rogerio de Mello and Qing Zhu for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Vereecken, H., Amelung, W., Bauke, S.L. et al. Soil hydrology in the Earth system. Nat Rev Earth Environ 3, 573–587 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00324-6

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