Water flow across the skin of the Earth – how badly are we doing?

Despite its limited vertical extent, the thin soil layer provides essential functions for climate and ecosystems globally. For accurate large scale process description, land use models compute the water distribution in soils based on spatial domains with a width-to-thickness ratio of about 1000:1: a geometry as thin as a sheet of paper. Most models simulate the water flow in these ‘soil sheets’ by solving the Richardson-Richards equation in 1D, neglecting smaller scale structures and lateral flow, and implicitly making strong assumptions on the relations between water content, matric potential, hydraulic conductivity, and water flux. To quantify the accuracy of this conceptualization, we compare drainage simulations of wet soils for the 1D column simplification with the full 2D-and 3D geometry using the correct sheet-like size ratio. The role of different climates, soil types, and heterogeneities at smaller scale is analyzed. These simulations based on the full geometry provide guidelines for (i) the applicability of Richardson-Richards equation in land surface models and (ii) the development of appropriate averaging schemes of soil hydraulic properties in the 1D scenario.