Soil moisture and temperature dynamics in juvenile and mature forest as a result of tree growth, hydrometeorological forcings, and drought.

Afforestation, as one of the major drivers of land cover change, has the potential to provide a wide range of ecosystem services (ES). Aside from carbon sequestration, it can improve hydrological regulation by increasing soil water storage capacity and reducing surface water runoff.  However, afforested areas are rarely studied at the appropriate time scale to determine when changes in soil hydrological processes occur as the forest grows. This study investigates the seasonal soil moisture and temperature dynamics, as well as the event-based responses to precipitation events and dry periods between a mature and juvenile forest ecosystem over a 5-year time period. Generally, soil moisture was higher in the juvenile forest than in the mature forest, indicating less physiological water demand. However, following the 2018 drought, soil moisture dynamics in the growing juvenile plantation began to match those of the mature forest, owing to canopy development and possibly also to internal resilience mechanisms of the young forest to external perturbations. On the other hand, soil temperature dynamics in the juvenile plantation followed air temperature patterns closely, indicating lower thermal regulation capacity compared to the mature forest. While our findings reveal that an aggrading juvenile plantation achieves mature forest soil moisture dynamics at an early stage, well before maturity, this was not the case for soil temperature. Our results shed light on long-term trends of seasonal and event-based responses of soil moisture and temperatures in different-aged forest systems, which can be used to inform future assessments of hydrological and ecosystem responses to disturbances and forest management.