Analyzing the Characteristics of Soil Moisture Using GLDAS Data: A Case Study in Eastern China

In this paper, we use GLDAS (Global Land Data Assimilation System) to analyze the effects of air temperature and precipitation on the characteristics of soil moisture in the eastern region of China from 1961 to 2011. We find that the temperature and precipitation in different seasons have different degrees of influence on the characteristics of soil moisture in each layer. The results show that over the last 50 years, the soil moisture in eastern China has a tendency to dry out, especially between the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The change of soil moisture with the depth of soil layer has similar inter-annual and seasonal patterns. Soil moisture in different depths (0–200 cm) positively correlates with the air temperatures of spring, summer and autumn, but negatively correlates with the air temperature in winter at 0–10 cm, 40–100 cm and 100–200 cm. Similarly, soil moisture is positively related to the precipitation in spring, summer and autumn, and the opposite is true in winter. The results also show that precipitation has a significant effect on the shallow soil moisture (0–10 cm), while air temperature most affects the deep soil moisture (100–200 cm).