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© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

This study was undertaken to address how near-surface soil water content (SWC) patterns have varied across diverse agroecological regions (AERs) of mainland India from 1979 to 2022 (44 years) and how these variations relate to environmental factors. Grid-wise trend analysis using the Mann–Kendall (MK) trend test and Sen’s slope was conducted to determine the trends and their magnitudes. Additionally, we used Spearman’s rank correlation (ρ) to explore the relationships of ESA CCI’s near-surface SWC data with key environmental variables, including rainfall, temperature, actual evapotranspiration, and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The results revealed significant variations in SWC patterns and trends across different AERs and months. The MK trend test indicated that 17.96% of the area exhibited a significantly increasing trend (p < 0.1), while7.6% showed a significantly decreasing trend, with an average annual Sen’s slope of 0.9 × 10−4 m3 m−3 year−1 for mainland India. Areas with the highest decreasing trends were AER-16 (warm per-humid with brown and red hill soils), AER-15 (hot subhumid to humid with alluvium-derived soils), and AER-17 (warm per-humid with red and lateritic soils). In contrast, increasing trends were the most prominent in AER-5 (hot semi-arid with medium and deep black soils), AER-6 (hot semi-arid with shallow and medium black soils), and AER-19 (hot humid per-humid with red, lateritic, and alluvium-derived soils). Significant increasing trends were more prevalent during monsoon and post-monsoon months while decreasing trends were noted in pre-monsoon months. Correlation analysis showed strong positive correlations of SWC with rainfall (ρ = 0.70), actual evapotranspiration (ρ = 0.74), and NDVI (ρ = 0.65), but weak or negative correlations with temperature (ρ = 0.12). This study provides valuable insights for policymakers to delineate areas based on soil moisture availability patterns across seasons, aiding in agricultural and water resource planning under changing climatic conditions.

Details

Title
Spatiotemporal Variations in Near-Surface Soil Water Content across Agroecological Regions of Mainland India: 1979–2022 (44 Years)
Author
Rani, Alka 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Sinha, Nishant K 1 ; Bikram Jyoti 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kumar, Jitendra 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kumar, Dhiraj 1 ; Mishra, Rahul 1 ; Singh, Pragya 3 ; Mohanty, Monoranjan 1 ; Jayaraman, Somasundaram 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Ranjeet Singh Chaudhary 1 ; Lenka, Narendra Kumar 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kumari, Nikul 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Srivastava, Ankur 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Division of Soil Physics, ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil Science, Nabibagh, Berasia Road, Bhopal 462038, India; [email protected] (A.R.); [email protected] (N.K.S.); [email protected] (J.K.); [email protected] (D.K.); [email protected] (R.M.); [email protected] (S.J.); [email protected] (R.S.C.); [email protected] (N.K.L.) 
 ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Nabibagh, Berasia Road, Bhopal 462038, India; [email protected] 
 ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110012, India; [email protected] 
 Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia; [email protected] 
First page
3108
Publication year
2024
Publication date
2024
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20724292
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3098193865
Copyright
© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.