Characterization of spatiotemporal patterns of soil water stable isotopes at an agricultural field

Spatiotemporal variations in soil water content (SWC) and soil water stable isotopic compositions (SWSIC; ²H/¹H (δD) and ¹⁸O/¹⁶O (δ¹⁸O)) provide critical information on elucidating land surface processes across scales. Meanwhile, little is known about the spatiotemporal characteristics of SWSIC and its driving factors. Therefore, it's necessary to improve tracer techniques of SWSIC by interpreting their spatiotemporal variability patterns as well as the correlations with other factors such as texture, soil depth and vegetation. To this end, the spatiotemporal variations in SWC and SWSIC along with their controlling factors were jointly investigated based on seven field campaigns over roughly a two-year period at an agricultural field in North China Plain. Two transects, vegetated and bared, were considered. The results of vegetated transect showed that both SWC and SWSIC exhibited considerable spatiotemporal variabilities at the field scale of ~100 m, with SWSIC displaying more complex patterns. Overall, the spatial variations in SWSIC were larger in wet seasons than in dry seasons, which decreased with increasing soil depth, largely due to less impacts of precipitation inputs and soil evaporation on SWSIC dynamics at deeper depths. The temporal stability analysis (TSA) showed that there existed temporal persistence of the spatial structure of SWSIC, particularly at deeper soil depths. Moreover, the SWSIC data in our study showed that the effect of vegetation on the SWSIC dynamics was noticeable with shading effects, root distribution and water uptake, which caused much lesser degrees of soil evaporation at the vegetated transect. What's more, the representative sites for monitoring spatial average δD values were identified, demonstrating the viability of using the TSA method to estimate the spatial average SWSIC values at field scales. These findings can improve the interpretation of SWSIC data for practical applications.