Subsurface Preferential Flow Enhances Hydrological Connectivity in the Shale Hills Catchment: Perspective from Wavelet-based Analysis

Preferential flow (PF)-dominated soil structure is often considered a unique system consisting of micropores and macropores and thus supposed to provide dual-pore filtering effects on hydrological signals, through which smoothing effects are likely to be stronger for matrix flow and weaker for PF via macropores. By using time series of hydrological signals (precipitation, canopy interception, throughfall, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, water storage in soil and groundwater, and catchment discharge) propagating through the Shale Hills Catchments and representative soil series, the filtering effects of the catchment and soil profiles were tested through the wavelet analysis. The hypothesized dual-pore-style filtering effects of the soil profile were also confirmed through the coherence spectra and phase differences, rendering them applicable for possible use as “fingerprints” of PF to infer subsurface flow features. We found that PF dominates the catchment’s discharge response at the scales from three to twelve days, which contributes to the catchment discharge mainly as subsurface lateral flow at upper or middle soil horizons. Through subsurface PF pathways, even the hilltop is likely hydrologically connected to the valley floor, building connections with or making contributions to the catchment discharge. This work highlights the potential of wavelet analysis for retrieving and characterizing subsurface flow processes based on the revealed dual-pore filtering effects of the soil system.