A practical approach to link lysimeter and large-scale measurement systems.

An accurate and reliable measurement system is essential for analysing transport processes within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum and for calibrating and validating ecosystem or hydrological models. Weighing lysimeters are very suitable tools for these purposes, as they are the most direct tools to reliably and precisely measure water mass balance components such as rainfall and non-rainfall water inputs, evapotranspiration, and percolation at the system boundaries. Investigating the ecosystem by use of lysimeters is more or less limited to point measurements, though. Approaches are therefore required to link lysimeter mesurements to the landscape scale. We present our experimental approach to link point and large-scale parameter assessment at an experimental station in Groß-Enzersdorf, Austria. In particular, we use soil water content data across the soil profiles from capacitance sensors and t-test statistics to check the representativeness of the conditions in the lysimeter body with the surrounding field and to assess soil hydraulic properties for numerical modeling of water fluxes. Based on this, we transfer measurement data with high measurement accuracy and temporal resolution from the lysimeter scale to the large-scale measurement systems such as eddy covariance, scintillometry, or isotope hydrology. On the other hand, we are able to incorporate parameters from areal measurements and from measurements using disturbed and undisturbed soil samples into the lysimeter measurement system.