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A Soil Water Climatology For Kansas, Michael J. Keables, Shitij Mehta

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Regional climate models suggest that summers in the Great Plains may become increasingly dry during this century, raising concern about the availability of water resources for irrigation and municipal water supplies. While the models predict drier conditions across the region, the impact of climate change on water availability at the local scale will depend largely upon the soils and their ability to store water during dry periods. This study presents a soil water climatology for Kansas using a climatic water balance approach. Monthly observations of temperature and precipitation for the period 1950–2006 are used to calculate climatologies of actual evapotranspiration, …