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@ARTICLE{Scharnagl:17191,
author = {Scharnagl, B. and Vrugt, J.A. and Vereecken, H. and Herbst,
M.},
title = {{I}nverse modelling of in situ soil water dynamics:
investigating the effect of different prior distributions of
the soil hydraulic parameters},
journal = {Hydrology and earth system sciences},
volume = {15},
issn = {1027-5606},
address = {Katlenburg-Lindau},
publisher = {EGU},
reportid = {PreJuSER-17191},
pages = {3043 - 3059},
year = {2011},
note = {We thank Marius Schmidt and Karl Schneider for providing
the meteorological data used to define the upper boundary
conditions. We also acknowledge the help of Nils
Prolingheuer during the measurement setup and data
collection. The first, third, and fourth author gratefully
acknowledge financial support by the TERENO project and by
SFB/TR 32 "Patterns in Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Systems:
Monitoring, Modelling, and Data Assimilation" funded by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). We thank the four
anonymous referees for their insightful comments on the
discussion paper and Mauro Giudici for his suggestions to
improve our paper.},
abstract = {In situ observations of soil water state variables under
natural boundary conditions are often used to estimate the
soil hydraulic properties. However, many contributions to
the soil hydrological literature have demonstrated that the
information content of such data is insufficient to
accurately and precisely estimate all the soil hydraulic
parameters. In this case study, we explored to which degree
prior information about the soil hydraulic parameters can
help improve parameter identifiability in inverse modelling
of in situ soil water dynamics under natural boundary
conditions. We used percentages of sand, silt, and clay as
input variables to the ROSETTA pedotransfer function that
predicts the parameters in the van Genuchten-Mualem (VGM)
model of the soil hydraulic functions. To derive additional
information about the correlation structure of the predicted
parameters, which is not readily provided by ROSETTA, we
employed a Monte Carlo approach. We formulated three prior
distributions that incorporate to different extents the
prior information about the VGM parameters derived with
ROSETTA. The inverse problem was posed in a formal Bayesian
framework and solved using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)
simulation with the DiffeRential Evolution Adaptive
Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm. Synthetic and real-world soil
water content data were used to illustrate the approach. The
results of this study demonstrated that prior information
about the soil hydraulic parameters significantly improved
parameter identifiability and that this approach was
effective and robust, even in case of biased prior
information. To be effective and robust, however, it was
essential to use a prior distribution that incorporates
information about parameter correlation.},
keywords = {J (WoSType)},
cin = {IBG-3},
ddc = {550},
cid = {I:(DE-Juel1)IBG-3-20101118},
pnm = {Terrestrische Umwelt},
pid = {G:(DE-Juel1)FUEK407},
shelfmark = {Geosciences, Multidisciplinary / Water Resources},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16},
UT = {WOS:000296745600001},
doi = {10.5194/hess-15-3043-2011},
url = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/17191},
}