Biological soil crusts cause subcritical water repellency in a sand dune ecosystem located along a rainfall gradient in the NW Negev desert, Israel
The biological soil crusts (BSCs) in the NW Negev cause local water redistribution by increasing surface runoff. The effects of pore clogging and swelling of organic and inorganic crust components were intensively investigated in earlier studies. However, the effect of water repellency (WR) was not...
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Published in | Journal of Hydrology and Hydromechanics Vol. 64; no. 2; pp. 133 - 140 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English Czech Slovak |
Published |
Bratislava
De Gruyter Open
01.06.2016
De Gruyter Poland Sciendo |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The biological soil crusts (BSCs) in the NW Negev cause local water redistribution by increasing surface runoff. The effects of pore clogging and swelling of organic and inorganic crust components were intensively investigated in earlier studies. However, the effect of water repellency (WR) was not addressed systematically yet. This study investigates subcritical WR of BSCs in three different study sites in the NW Negev. For this purpose, three common methods to determine soil WR were used: (i) the repellency index (RI) method (ii) the water drop penetration time (WDPT) test and (iii) the Wilhelmy plate method (WPM). Furthermore, the potential influence of WR on local water redistribution is discussed and the applied methods are compared. We found the BSC to be subcritically water repellent. The degree of WR may only affect water redistribution on a microscale and has little influence on the ecosystem as a whole. The RI method was clearly the most appropriate to use, whereas the WDPT and the WPM failed to detect subcritical WR. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0042-790X 0042-790X 1338-4333 |
DOI: | 10.1515/johh-2016-0001 |