Soil moisture and precipitation intensity jointly control the transit time distribution of quick flow in a flashy headwater catchment

Abstract

The rainfall–runoff transformation in catchments usually follows a variety of slower and faster flow paths, leading to a mixture of “younger” and “older” water in streamflow. Previous studies have investigated the time-variable distribution of water ages in streamflow (transit time distribution, TTD) using stable isotopes of water (δ18O, δ2H) together with transport models based on StorAge Selection (SAS) functions. These functions are traditionally formulated based on soil moisture to mimic the preferential release of younger water as the system becomes wetter. In this study, we hypothesized that, in a heterogeneous catchment with a significant fast-runoff response component, precipitation intensity, in addition to soil moisture, plays a critical role in the preferential release of younger water. To test this hypothesis, we used high-resolution δ18O data (weekly and event-based streamflow δ18O samples) in a 66 ha agricultural catchment. We tested two scenarios of the SAS function parameterization for the preferential-flow age selection: one as a function of soil moisture only and one as a function of both soil moisture and precipitation intensity. The results showed that accounting for both soil moisture and precipitation intensity to define the shape of SAS functions for preferential flow improved the tracer simulation in streamflow (increasing the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency from 0.31 to 0.51). This also led to a higher percentage of streamflow (an increase from 2.87 % to 4.38 %) with shorter transit times (TTs younger than 7 d), with the largest differences occurring during the summer and autumn months. This was due to the fact that incorporating both soil wetness and precipitation intensity in the SAS formulation accounts for rapid flow pathways such as infiltration excess overland flow, preferential flow through macropores, and tile drain flow – allowing precipitation water to bypass much of the soil matrix and to reach the stream with minimal storage or mixing, even under dry soil conditions. We showed for the agricultural study catchment that a significant portion of event water bypasses the soil matrix through fast-flow paths, resulting in younger water reaching the stream for both low- and high-intensity precipitation. Thus, in catchments where preferential flows and overland flow are the dominant flow processes, soil-wetness-dependent and precipitation-intensity-conditional SAS functions may be required to better describe the timescale of solute transport in modelling, which has implications for stream water quality and agricultural management practices such as the timing of fertilizer application.