Soils Animated: Part 1
Animation is a powerful tool for demonstrating scientific concepts. It is engaging, simplifies abstract ideas, and makes them accessible to a wide audience.
In hydrology, one of the most simple yet elegant conceptualization of soil-water dynamics is the soil moisture loss function, a model developed by Laio et al. (2001) and Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. (1999). This model abstract complex soil processes at the field scale into a few key variables, providing ecohydrologists with a powerful 'toy model' for conducting a variety of interesting experiments. For example, Entekhabi and Rodriguez-Iturbe (1994) explored the impacts of spatio-temporal aggregation on characterizing heterogeneity of soil moisture dynamics. D'Odorico and Porporato (2004) used it to explain soil moisture seasonality.
In this blog post, I'll animate this soil dynamics model, with Part 1 focusing on the basic concepts. Animations in this blog post will illustrate how hydrologists conceptualize the soil processes happening just above and beneath our feet, while also exploring how these processes unfolds across different conceptual spaces.