[Spatial heterogeneity of soil moisture and its relationships with environmental factors at small catchment level]

Taking the Wulongchi catchment of Danjiangkou in central China as a case, the soil moisture regime in the observation period from April to October, 2008 was divided into different dry-wet time periods by two way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN), and the environmental factors that had significant effects on the spatial pattern of soil moisture in different dry-wet time periods were selected by forward selection and Monte Carlo tests. The redundancy analysis (RDA) was adopted to identify the relationships between the distribution pattern of soil moisture and the environmental factors in different time periods, and the partial RDA was applied to quantitatively analyze the effects of environmental factors, spatial variables, and their interactions on the variation pattern of the soil moisture. The soil moisture regime in the observation period was divided into 7 types, and grouped into 4 time periods, i. e. , dry, semi-arid, semi-humid, and humid. In dry period, land use type was the dominant factor affecting the spatial pattern of soil moisture, and the soil thickness, relative elevation, profile curvature, soil bulk density, and soil organic matter content also had significant effects. In semi-arid period, soil thickness played dominant role, and land use type, topographic wetness index, soil bulk density, and profile curvature had significant effects. In semi-humid period, topographic wetness index was the most important affecting factor, and the land use type and the sine value of aspect played significant roles. In humid period, the topographic compound index and the sine value of aspect were the dominant factors, whereas the relative elevation and catchment area were the important factors. In the four time periods, there was a better consistency between the spatial distribution pattern of soil moisture and the environmental ecological gradient. From dry period to humid period, the independent effects of environmental factors on soil moisture pattern decreased but were still in dominant, the independent effects of spatial location had less change and maintained at lower level, while the interactions between environmental factors and spatial location contributed more and more.