The Role of Vadose Zone Storage Deficits in Modulating Groundwater Recharge and Streamflow in Seasonally Dry Watersheds

Abstract

In forested, seasonally dry watersheds, winter rains commonly replenish water storage deficits in the vadose zone before recharging underlying hillslope groundwater systems that sustain streamflow. However, the relative inaccessibility of the subsurface limits our understanding of how groundwater recharge is moderated by vadose zone storage deficits generated by plant-water uptake. Here, we compare groundwater recharge inferred from the storage-discharge relationship with independent, distributed estimates of deficits across 12 undisturbed California watersheds. We find accrued dry season deficits primarily driven by evapotranspiration insufficiently explain inter-annual variability in the amount of precipitation required to generate groundwater recharge due to continued deficit accumulation between wet season storms. Tracking the deficit at the storm event-scale, however, reveals a characteristic response in groundwater to increasing rainfall not captured in the seasonal analysis that may improve estimates of the rainfall required to generate recharge and streamflow on a per-storm basis. Our findings demonstrate the potential for existing public data sets to better capture water partitioning within the subsurface and thus improve the prediction of rainfall-runoff behavior and summer water availability in rainfall-dominated, seasonally dry basins using a combined deficit-recharge approach.