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SCHRIFTENREIHE Institut für Pflanzenernährung und Bodenkunde ...

SCHRIFTENREIHE Institut für Pflanzenernährung und Bodenkunde ...

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Chapter 5 Modeling Grazing Effects on Coupled Water and Heat Fluxes in Inner Mongolia Grassland<br />

distinguished textural and structural fractions for the soil pore space and fo<strong>und</strong><br />

that soil compaction mainly affected the structural pore space. This can explain<br />

why the NN model, that only accounted for soil textural fraction, can not make an<br />

accurately predictions of compaction effects. Therefore, we consider that in situ<br />

measurements of θ(h) and K(h) are necessary to reflect the soil structural<br />

changes induced by land management when process-oriented modeling<br />

techniques is used to evaluate the influences of land management. Moreover,<br />

we showed both water and heat transports as a function of grazing<br />

managements and therefore coupled water flow with heat transport. However,<br />

we emphasized particularly on aspects of water fluxes (detailed in the next<br />

section) because the heat stress was weaker for grass growth than the water<br />

stress in this grassland (Zhang et al., 2005).<br />

Grazing Effects on Water Budget in Semi-arid Grassland<br />

The components of ET, i.e., interception, transpiration and evaporation<br />

significantly varied with grazing intensity, although ET itself was only slightly<br />

influenced by grazing as shown by other studies (e.g., Bremer et al., 2001; Chen<br />

et al., 2007). Compared with the grazed sites, interception and transpiration<br />

increased and soil evaporation decreased in the ungrazed sites where soil was<br />

covered more completely by live or dead plant materials. In contrast to this,<br />

evaporation in the grazed sites simultaneously increased due to larger bare<br />

gro<strong>und</strong> areas. Consequently, soil water storage decreased with increasing<br />

grazing intensity.<br />

Parameters that influence the simulation of water budgets were soil<br />

hydraulic properties, plant characteristics and weather conditions, of which the<br />

latest one was assumed identical for all sites, while the other parameters were<br />

grazing-dependent. Because of the grazing-induced changes, overall, water<br />

budget in Inner Mongolia grassland was significantly influenced by grazing.<br />

Firstly, grazing decreased hydraulic conductivity because of animals trampling,<br />

especially in the topsoil (Wang and Ripley, 1997; Krümmelbein et al., 2006).<br />

Combined with weakly intercepted water, the infiltration excess runoff was most<br />

107

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