Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Factors Influencing Soil Moisture At The Hillslope Scale In A Semi-Arid Mountainous Environment, Ivan John Geroy

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Soil moisture couples ground, surface, and atmospheric water interactions via the processes of evapotranspiration, infiltration, and runoff generation (Grayson et al., 1997). Consequently, understanding the factors that influence the spatial distribution of soil moisture is vitally important to the accurate conceptualization and modeling of watershed processes. Typically, topographic indexing methods for the prediction of soil moisture have been studied in temperate or humid areas where the soil profile is often saturated and redistribution of soil moisture is driven by topography (Famiglietti et al., 1998; Grayson et al., 1997; Western et al., 1999). By contrast, in semi-arid environments, long periods of …