CATENA-01880; No of Pages 10

Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

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Catena
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Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration
under simulated rainfall experiments
Jun Huang, Pute Wu , Xining Zhao
College of Water Resources and Architecture Engineering, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, Shaanxi, China
Institute of Water Saving Agriculture in Arid regions of China, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China
National Engineering Research Center for Water Saving Irrigation at Yangling, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China
Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences & Ministry of Water Resources, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 15 February 2012
Received in revised form 14 September 2012
Accepted 22 October 2012
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Simulated rain
Inltration
Vegetation
Recharge coefcient

a b s t r a c t
Knowledge of inltration patterns and process is very important in understanding and managing slope
hydrological processes, crop irrigation, soil erosion, and so on. This paper describes a study in which simulated rainfall events were used to study the effects of various factors (vegetation cover, rainfall intensity, and
slope angle) on the soil moisture increase after rainfall and the inltration recharge coefcient. Soils hosting
three different plants (purple medic, PM; spring wheat, SW; and ryegrass, RS) were considered, along with
bare soil (BL). These soil surfaces were tested with four different slopes (8.8, 17.6, 26.8 and 36.4%) and
subjected to ve different rainfall intensities (0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mm min 1). The following key results
were obtained: (1) The water distribution in BL boxes differed signicantly from that in boxes with vegetation cover, but all boxes with vegetation cover exhibited similar distributions. Vegetation cover signicantly
increased the depth of the wetting front: under very similar conditions, the wetting front in the RS box
reached a depth of more than 35 cm, while that in the BL box reached only 25 cm. (2) Vegetation cover
(especially ryegrass) yielded a greater soil moisture increase than did bare land. The overall average soil
moisture increase for RS boxes was 36.7 5.1 mm, about twice than that of BL. (3) The water storage after
rain across the whole soil prole initially increased and then decreased as the rainfall intensity rose. No
differences in the average soil water content increase were found between various rainfall intensities.
(4) As the slope increased from 8.8% to 36.4%, the water storage increase initially rose but then fell sharply.
There were signicant differences (p = 0.05) between the water storage increases for gradual slopes (8.8
and 17.6%) and steep slopes (26.8 and 3.4%). (5) The recharge coefcient increased with increasing vegetation cover but decreased with increasing rainfall intensity, slope gradient, and initial soil water content.
The average value for boxes with vegetation cover was 1.5 times that for BL boxes. The vegetation cover
was the most important factor in determining the recharge coefcient.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Arid and semiarid regions cover a large proportion of global land
surface area (Arnon, 1972; Dregne, 1991). In these areas, soil moisture is the greatest limitation affecting vegetation restoration and
crop production (Chen et al., 2007; Moreno-de las Heras et al.,
2011), especially, in the Chinese Loess Plateau (Fu et al., 2003; Wu
et al., 2003). The amount of water inltrating the soil surface has a
direct effect on the quantity of surface runoff and erosion, and the
recharge of both soil and ground water (Liu et al., 2011). Inltration is
the process whereby water enters the soil and adds to the total soil

Corresponding author at: Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy
of Sciences & Ministry of Water Resources, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China. Tel./fax: +86
29 87011354.
E-mail addresses: hjnwsuaf@gmail.com (J. Huang), gjzwpt@vip.sina.com (P. Wu),
xiningzhao@yahoo.com.cn (X. Zhao).

moisture (Philip, 1957a; Lei et al., 1988). It is therefore an important

factor in determining the soil moisture level (Bouwer, 1986; Hillel,
1998; Shao, 1985). There are a number of factors that affect inltration,
including the slope, rainfall regime, soil texture, soil structure, vegetation, and so on (Leonard and Andrieux, 1998). Moreover the effects of
these factors are often interdependent. Because it is quite difcult to
investigate multiple factors at once when studying soil inltration,
most previous studies have focused on only one or two of them. However, it is important to understand multi-factor effects on inltration
patterns and processes in order to properly understand and predict
the impact of re-vegetation and cultivation, especially in light of their
inuence on soil moisture in regions where rainfall is the sole source
of water replenishment (Wang et al., 2008).
Soil inltration is highly dependent on rainfall intensity and the
relationship between these two quantities has been studied in detail
(Assouline and Mualem, 1997; Foley and Silburn, 2002; Hawke et
al., 2006; Morin and Benyamini, 1977). McIntyre (1958) discovered

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Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

that the permeability of the skin seal (crust) is 2000 times lower than
that of the underlying soil layers. Morin and Benyamini (1977) studied the rate of inltration through bare and mulched soil under different rainfall intensities and concluded that the inltration rate is a
function of the accumulated rainfall depth and is signicantly
affected by the impact of raindrops. Beven and Germann (1982)
found that raindrop impacts can seal the soil, signicantly reducing
the rate of inltration. Rmkens et al. (1985) reported that rainfall
drops can destroy or deform the arrangement of soil particles and
that the detached particles can clog the soil pores, again reducing
the rate of inltration. Assouline and Mualem (1997) modeled sealing
due to rainfall as a function of rainfall intensity, the second moment
of the drop-size density distribution, the maximal drop diameter,
the compaction limit of the soil, and the soil's initial shear strength,
which depends on the initial soil bulk density and water content.
Abu-Awwad (1997) studied the inuence of surface crusts on water
inltration and redistribution, and found that sand columns could
signicantly increase the amount of moisture stored in the soil and
reduce the amount of runoff. Fohrer et al. (1999) conducted a series
of laboratory experiments to study changes in the rate of inltration
and soil surface contention under continuous/subsequent rainfall
and found that subsequent rainfall resulted in a much more rapid
decrease in the rate of inltration than did continuous rainfall. Interestingly, Foley and Silburn (2002) showed that the rate of inltration
increased in parallel with the rainfall intensity, which appears to contradict previous ndings. Li and Shao (2006) studied the inuence of
rainfall intensity on inltration and redistribution, and identied
power function relations between the position of the wetting front,
the rainfall duration, and the rainfall intensity. Laboratory experiments
have also been conducted to investigate near-surface soil hydrologic
conductivity under different rainfall intensities (Hawke et al., 2006).
They found that rainfall intensity had an important inuence on soil hydraulic conductivity. Schindewolf and Schmidt (2012) showed that the
cumulative rainfall had the negative effect on soil inltration, using a
3 1 m plot with a runoff-feeding device which was installed at the
upper end of the plot under simulated rainfall events.
The importance of vegetation cover in maintaining and improving
soil stability and permeability is well known and has been discussed
extensively (Branson et al., 1972; Coleman, 1953). Vegetation cover
affects soil inltration in two ways: (1) by changing the hydrological
process of rainfall-inltration on slopes, and (2) by modifying the
structure of the soil pore spaces as a result of the formation of the
root system (Li et al., 1992; Yun et al., 2006). Field investigations
conducted by Marston (1952) in the Davis County Experimental
Watershed demonstrated that vegetation cover of 65% or more significantly reduced runoff and increased inltration. Galle et al. (1999)
studied the water balance in a belt-shaped vegetation pattern in
western Niger and created a simple water balance model to predict
soil inltration based on four years eld observations. McLeod et al.
(2006) researched the soil water regimes of a Brown Chromosol on
the Northern Tablelands of NSW, Australia under three pasture types,
and noted that the vigorous phalaris plus white clover pasture yielded
the greatest potential for water storage. Wang et al. (2008) studied
the inuence of vegetation on inltration and redistribution patterns
with the aim of identifying tools for rebuilding desert ecosystems and
suggested that vegetation had a signicant effect on inltration and redistribution patterns in stabilized sand dunes. Schwartz et al.(2010)
studied soil water redistribution under sweep tillage and in untilled
control plots and found that tillage with a sweep of 0.070.1 m signicantly reduced net water storage at soil depths above 0.3 m but did not
affect the water content at depths 0.2 m. The effect of rock fragment
cover on soil inltration rate under Mediterranean conditions was
widely investigated (Agassi and Levy, 1991; Martnez-Murillo et al.,
2012; Ruiz-Sinoga and Martnez-Murillo, 2009). They found that rock
fragment cover could signicantly increase inltration and decrease
evaporation.

At present, there is no strong consensus in the literature regarding

the effects of the slope's gradient on soil inltration, although a number of eld and experimental simulated words have been conducted.
Some workers have claimed that steeper gradients have a positive
inuence on inltration. Poesen (1986) studied ve different slope
angles and found that steeper gradients yielded reduced sealing
because the raindrops hit the soil on steeper slopes at a more acute
angle with less kinetic energy per unit surface area. Janeau et al.
(2003) also studied the inuence of the slope on inltration under
eld conditions, examining gradients ranging from 16 to 63%. Their
results indicated that the steady nal inltration rate increased sharply
with the gradient. However, others have reported decreased inltration
with increasing slope angle due to a decrease in the depth of the overland ow and reduced surface storage (Chaplot and Le Bissonnais,
2000). Nassif (1975) reported that inltration capacity decreased as
the slope increased in laboratory experiments. Similar ndings were
reported by Jiang and Huang (1984), Jin et al. (1995) and Yuan et al.
(2001). Interestingly, Fu et al. (2008) found that the nature of the relationship between the slope gradient and inltration changed as the gradient increased, as did the likelihood of soil crust formation. Moreover,
some other authors found that there is no relation between soil inltration and gradients (Cerd and Garca-Fayos, 1997; Mah et al., 1992;
Singer and Blackard, 1982).
While there have been many reported studies on soil inltration,
there is a need for more detailed investigations of multi-factor effects
on inltration and soil moisture levels. To this end, we conducted a
quantitative study on soil inltration and the factors that control it
using simulated outdoor rainfall events on a range of slope angles
and underlying surfaces. The objective of the study was to better understand the differences between bare and vegetation-covered slopes
in terms of (1) the position of the wetting front; (2) soil moisture
storage after rain; and (3) the variation of the recharge coefcient.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Site description
The experiments were conducted at the eld monitoring station
operated by the Soil and Water Conservation Research Institute of the
Chinese Academy in Linghou, Wuquan Town, Yangling District, Shaanxi
Province. The Yangling District is located on the western Guanzhong
Plain of Shaanxi Province, north of the Weihe River (E1075910808,
N34143420). It is 7 km long from north to south and 16 km wide
from east to west, covering a total area of 94 km2. The elevation of the
district is greatest at the northern end and falls gradually on moving
southwards, from 540.1 m ASL to 418.0 m. There are three rivers on its
borders: the Weihe River, which runs along its southern border, and
two smaller rivers that run along its eastern and northern borders, respectively. The district is spread over the terraces and the rst, second,
and third oodplains of the Weihe, with the town of Wuquan lying the
third oodplain. The area has an arid-humid monsoon climate. The annual mean precipitation and evapotranspiration are 637.6 mm and
884.0 mm, respectively.
2.2. Rainfall simulator
All experiments were performed with a portable needle rainfall
simulator as depicted in Fig. 1. Portable rainfall simulators of this
kind have been widely used for various purposes (Walsh et al., 1998)
because they make it possible to gather data under controlled conditions over relatively short periods of time (Navas et al., 1990). The rainfall simulator has four components: (1) The Mariotte bottle, which
provides a constant water level in the water tank to guarantee high
rainfall uniformity. (2) The vibration motor, which produces a uniform
distribution of raindrops across the catchment. (3) The needle plate.

Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Aeration pipe
Water inlet
Intake pipe
Four-legged bracket

Mariotte
flask of
watering
device

Water tank

Triangle bracket

Needles plate
Vibration motor

Height regulation bolt

Soil box

Fig. 1. The rainfall simulator and its components. (See Fig. 1 with PDF format).

(4) The water tank, which has a volume of 1.7 m 1.2 m 0.25 m. For a
detailed description of the rainfall simulator, see Table 1.

2.3. Soil box setup

Most plot areas were less than 5 m 2 used for simulated rainfall experiments since 1938 (Iserloh et al., 2010). In general, the soil box/
plot size for lab-experiments were L W D = (12 m) (0.51 m)
(0.220.5 m) (Adekalu et al., 2007; Dunj et al., 2004; Fohrer et al.,
1999; Kato et al., 2009; Molina et al., 2007; Nassif, 1975; Pan and
Shangguan, 2006; Poesen et al., 1994; Poulenard et al., 2001; Vahabi
and Nikkami, 2008). So, we set the soil boxes as 1.2 m 0.8 m
0.45 m. They were tted with four wheels to facilitate transportation
and with a jack to allow their slope to be adjusted from 0 to 57.7%.
The boxes had apertures at the bottom to allow free movement of soil
water.
The clay content of the soil in Linghou, Wuquan Town, which is located on the third oodplain and terrace of the Weihe River is very
high; while the soil in the Yangling Water Saving Exhibition Garden,
which is located on the rst oodplain and terrace of the Weihe
River, is rich in sand particles. Both of them are quite different from
that generally found on the Loess Plateau of our object of study. In
order to get a similar texture soil with that generally found on the

Table 1
Technical details of the rainfall simulator.
Technical conguration

Parameter values

Area
Needles number
Water supply
Rainfall intensity
Mean coefcient of uniformity
Height of fall
Inside diameter
Space between needles
Drop range
Mean drop velocity
Mean rainfall kinetic per unit area and time

1.5 m 1.0 m
Around 650
Water level control
0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mm min1
>80%
1.2 m
1 mm
40 mm
0.52 mm
4.78 m s1
0.2193 J m2 s1

Loess Plateau, these two soils from these two sites were blended to
yield a 1:1 w/w mixture that was gently crushed, passed through a
10 mm sieve, and then air-dried to give an initial water content of
610%. Finally, the sieved and dried soil was thoroughly mixed to
minimize differences between treatments and packed into the
boxes in four 10 cm layers to achieve a natural bulk density of around
1.35 g cm 3. Each layer of soil was lightly raked before packing the
next later to minimize the discontinuities between layers. Various
chemical and physical properties of the nal experimental soil are
shown in Table 2.
2.4. Treatments
Five different rainfall intensities were employed in combination
with four different slopes. The studied rainfall intensities were 0.5,
0.75, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mm min 1; the studied slopes were 8.8%,
17.6%, 26.8% and 36.4%. Three vegetation types were considered: ryegrass (Lolium perenne L), purple medic (Medicago sativa Linn) and
spring wheat (Triticum aestivum), which are widely grown across
the Loess Plateau. Unplanted bare soil was also tested as a control
treatment, giving four underlying surface types: purple medic (PM),
spring wheat (SW), ryegrass (RS) and the bare land control treatment
(BL). Grazing grass and crops were sowed separately, using broadcast
sowing; grass was sowed in early April of 2009 and crops in midMarch of 2009. Ryegrass and purple medic were mowed between 2
and 5 times during the experiment, according to local management
practices. The experiment began in mid-May 2009. In order to monitor the development of rooting depth during the whole experiment,
we measured the maximum root length for three vegetations at 5th,
June and 11th, August, 2009, respectively. The data are illustrated in
Fig. 2. During the whole detecting period, the root length of Purple
medic was the longest. But the root tillering of ryegrass was the
largest.
2.5. Measurements and methods
The runoff amount was measured using a 1000 ml standard cylinder every 0.520 min after runoff generation. After the deposition

Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Table 2
Selected chemical and physical properties of the soil studied.
Particle diameter/mm
b0.001

0.0010.05

0.050.25

0.31%

74.26%

13.27%

TPS

FMC/
cm3 cm3

pH

Organic/
g kg1

Total N/
g kg1

Total P/
g Kg1

Total K/
g Kg1

48.3%

22.3%

8.45

12.3

0.9

0.8

15.4

Note: TPS and FMC are the total porosity of soil and eld moisture capacity. Soil texture is the silty loam.

and clarication of turbid water, the clear water volume was regarded
as the runoff amount.
The vegetation cover was measured by taking three to ve JPG
format photos with a digital camera (Fuji J25 was used in this study)
to record vegetation growth status information. The camera lens was
held parallel to the slope surface and the distance between the slope
surface and the lens was held constant insofar as possible. The JPG format photos were then converted to TIFF format photos with a lab
color channel using the Photoshop software package. Finally, the vegetation cover was calculated using the Image-J software package. The
accuracy and stability of this method was good, with an absolute
error of around 2% (Niu, 2009). The calculated results were calibrated
against visual cover estimates made by three experienced professionals.
Over the course of the experiment, 45 vegetation cover measurements
were conducted, yielding geometrical mean, maximum and minimum
values of 61.0%, 97.1% and 21.0%, respectively.
Soil moisture levels were determined by oven drying using eight
samples (2 positions 4 soil depths) from each soil box as shown in
Fig. 3. Measurements were conducted before rain treatment and as
soon as possible after treatment as well. Additional measurements
were conducted around 4, 8 and 21 h after rain. Overall, the soil
water content of each box was measured ve times for each rainfall
event. The IBM SPSS Statistics 19.0 and the Origin 8.0 software package were used to do statistical analysis and draw gures in this study,
respectively.
The increase in soil moisture for each layer was calculated using
the following formula:
SW Safter Sbefore  BD  H

where SW is the soil moisture increase (mm); Safter and Sbefore are
the soil moisture after and before rain (g g 1), respectively; BD is
the soil bulk density (g cm 3); and H is the soil layer thickness
(mm).

Fig. 2. Root length developments during the experiment.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Wetting front
There were signicant differences in the distribution of soil moisture between BL boxes and boxes with vegetation cover, but all boxes
with vegetation cover exhibited similar trends in distribution. We
therefore investigated two rainfall events (A and B) in boxes with different underlying surface conditions (one RS and one BL box) to study
soil moisture redistribution (see Fig. 4). Both boxes had a slope of
17.6%, were subjected to a rainfall intensity of 0.53 mm min 1, and
had initial soil moisture levels of around 10%. The rainfall duration
in case A (the RS box) was 107 min while that in case B (the BL
box) was 108.5 min.
After 107 min rainfall, the wetting front in the RS box reached a
depth of more than 35 cm. The moisture of the topmost soil layer
(at a depth of 010 cm) increased by approximately a factor of 4, to
its maximum possible value of 29.5% which was slightly over the saturated water content (around 25%). The soil moisture content at a
depth of 1030 cm increased somewhat less and exceeded the eld
moisture capacity, while that for the soil layer between 30 and
40 cm barely increased at all and much less than the eld moisture
capacity. Overall, the soil moisture content of the box as a whole
more than doubled. Conversely, in case B, the wetting front only
reached a depth of approximately 25 cm and the overall soil moisture
content of the box increased by much less than a factor of two. The
presence of plants thus changed the process by which rain entered
the soil, with the roots forming irregular soil pores that increased
the soil's permeability (Li et al., 1992; Yun et al., 2006). This reduced
the amount of runoff and increased both the extent of inltration and
the depth of penetration of the wetting front (Li and Shao, 2007a).
Additional vegetation canopy could assimilate and reduce the kinetic
impact of raindrops on the soil surface (Greene and Hairsine, 2004;
Luce, 1997; Moss and Green, 1987), which might decrease the surface
soil sealing and maintain soil high inltration rate (Abu-Awwad,
1997; Hillel, 1960; Schmidt et al., 1964). Unfortunately, detailed information about the sealing was not measured in this study due to
the limitation of equipments. Over the four h immediately following
the termination of the rainfall, the moisture of surface layer gradually
decreased as the water moved down into the soil or evaporated, and
the moisture content of the deeper layers increased (Hillel, 1971).
Moisture became uniformly distributed throughout the soil prole,
with the moisture content of the 3040 cm layer increasing sharply
in both cases. Around 8 h after the termination of the rainfall, the
soil moisture had been redistributed further and there were noticeable differences between the two cases. In the BL box, the soil moisture levels at all depths exhibited very modest changes 21 h of the
termination of rainfall and were tending slowly towards a steady state.
However, in the RS box, the soil water was still being redistributed. Vegetation thus prolonged the soil moisture redistribution process. Wang et
al. (2008) and Bao et al. (2012) also observed this phenomenon in eld.
The soil moisture levels across the entire 040 cm soil prole for cases A
and B 21 h after the rain were 1.9 and 1.5 times greater than those before although it is still inadequate to detect the soil moisture redistribution for 0 to 40 cm soil depth in this study and there must be some
signicant differences from eld conditions because of the soil box

Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Width:80 cm

Height:45 cm
Soil surface
5 cm

Up slope

e
urfac

Soil s

ottom
Soil b

15 cm
45 cm

Length:200 cm

Runoff collector

25 cm
35 cm

Down slope
Adjustable leg

Soil bottom

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram showing the apparatus used to measure soil moisture. Note: The red circles indicate where soil samples were taken to determine the soil moisture level.
(For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web of this article.)

size. Studies of Abu-Awwad (1997), Wang et al. (2008) and Bao et al.
(2012) revealed that soil moisture redistribution mainly occurred in
the depth of 020 cm, and there were no signicant changes in soil
moisture for layer of lower than 20 cm after rain.

3.2. Soil water proles following the termination of rainfall.

Fig. 5 shows the average increase in soil moisture at different
depths for four underlying surfaces with a slope angle of 8.8% after
approximately 42 mm of rainfall. It is apparent that there were only
modest differences between the different surfaces in terms of the increase in soil moisture for the 010 cm layer. However, in the deeper
layers, the increase in soil moisture was much more pronounced in
the boxes with vegetation cover than in the BL boxes. The average increase in soil moisture over the full depth of the box (i.e. between
0 and 40 cm), the start time of runoff, and the runoff volume for
each surface type is shown in Table 3. We can see that vegetation
signicantly postponed runoff generation (Regs et al., 2010) and
diminished the runoff amount. No differences in the start time of runoff were detected between four underlying surface boxes (p > 0.05).
There were signicant differences in the runoff volume (p = 0.05) between vegetated-boxes and bare soil, but no differences between

Fig. 4. Soil moisture redistribution in test cases A and B. Curves a and b indicate the soil
moisture content at different depths before and immediately after the termination of
rainfall, respectively; lines c, d and e indicate the inltration of soil moisture 4, 8 and
21 h after the termination of rainfall.

boxes with vegetation cover (p > 0.05). The observed increases are
rather modest compared to those reported in some earlier eld
studies (Abu-Awwad, 1997; McLeod et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2008)
due to boundary effects, since our soil boxes were relatively small.
Many comparative studies reveal that the scale of plot has the significant effect on slope runoff/inltration (Boers and Ben-Asher, 1982;
Schindewolf and Schmidt, 2012; Smets et al., 2008a). It was noteworthy that the ASMI for the 010 cm layer of the PM boxes was similar
to that for the BL boxes. During the experiment, we found that a layer
of ashy green biological crust was formed in the surface of the PM
boxes, which reduced the roughness of the slope to some extent,
increasing the amount of runoff and decreasing inltration (Bond,
1964; Eldridge et al., 2000). But we did not identify the biological
crusts due to the limitation of equipment. The average soil moisture
increase for each layer decreased as the depth increased, especially
in BL boxes. For the 010 cm surface layer in BL boxes, the average
soil moisture increase was around 10 mm. Conversely, that for the
1020 cm layer was 4.4 mm, i.e. approximately 56% lower, and the
increase for the 2040 cm later was only 2.8 mm. The ASMI thus
decreased exponentially with the depth in the BL boxes. The moisture
increase also declined with depth in the boxes with vegetation cover,
but the decrease was much less pronounced than in the BL boxes.
Many led observations (Hu et al., 2006; Xu et al., 2003) revealed
that the soil moisture for upslope was smaller than that for downslope,

Fig. 5. Average soil moisture increment (ASMI) for each layer and slope position at the
end of rainfall for four underlying surfaces.

Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Table 3
The average soil moisture increase at depths of 040 cm for four underlying surfaces.

Rainfall intensity/mm min1

Underlying surfaces

Average increase in soil

moisture at depths of
040 cm/mm
Mean rainfall amount/mm
Start time of runoff/min
Runoff volume/l
Number of rainfall events

Table 4
The average soil moisture increase at depths of 040 cm for ve rainfall intensities.

BL

PM

SW

RS

17.6 3.7a

31.8 3.6ab

32.7 4.9ab

36.7 5.1b

42.0 9.1a
4.5 5.1a
18.6 7.0a
9

42.3 8.0a
5.0 4.3a
10.1 5.2b
8

43.0 6.8a
5.5 4.6a
9.5 3.5b
5

41.7 9.5a
9.9 6.3a
8.2 4.1b
7

Note: Mean standard deviation within a row followed by the same letter are not
signicantly different at p = 0.05 level using the least signicant difference (LSD)
method. The same as below.

and there was a signicant difference between them. However, no differences were found between upslope and downslope sampling sites
(p= 0.582) in these experiments, which might be due to the relatively
short slope length. The only underlying surfaces between which there
was a signicant difference in soil moisture increase were BL and RS
(p= 0.05). Overall, our ndings indicate that vegetation can increase
soil moisture retention after rain at least somewhat compared to bare
land, in other word, vegetation improve soil water storage to some extent (Liu et al., 2000). This is likely to be important in arid and semi-arid
regions.
The histogram in Fig. 6 shows the soil moisture increases for
ve different rainfall intensities for a given total rainfall (approx.
54 mm) with a slope gradient of 17.6% in RS boxes. It is clear that
the relationship between rainfall intensity and the soil moisture
increase is complex and irregular; the ASMI for the different soil
layers and positions differed without any clear trend or pattern. For
the 010 cm surface layer, the soil moisture increase initially increased with the rainfall intensity but then decreased, peaking at
around 1.0 mm min 1. However, for the layers between 10 and
40 cm, the soil moisture increase decreased uniformly with increasing rainfall intensity. Higher rainfall intensities yield raindrops with
more kinetic energy, which has two consequences that increase the
amount of runoff and disfavor inltration. First, it destroys the structure of the topsoil, decreases soil permeability, and increases the
splash erosion (Schmidt, 2010). Second, raindrop impacts might induce
some extent of soil sealing, preventing inltration (Abu-Awwad, 1997;
McIntyre, 1958). Table 4 summarizes the average increase in soil moisture

Fig. 6. ASMI for each layer and slope position after the termination of rainfall for ve
rainfall intensities.

0.5
Average increase in soil moisture at 32.3
depths of 040 cm/mm
1.7a
Mean rainfall amount/mm
55.3
3.9a
Start time of runoff/min
17.0
6.9ab
Runoff volume/l
10.3
3.4a
Number of rainfall events
11

0.75

1.0

1.5

2.0

35.3
2.3a
53.5
2.0a
14.3
4.9b
13.7
3.3ac
14

36.8
2.9a
54.8
2.3a
9.6
5.3abc
14.1
3.1bc
15

26.5
2.8a
54.8
1.5a
5.5
4.1ac
15.4
5.0d
8

21.6
3.1a
53.0
1.6a
4.2
3.9c
18.6
4.6d
10

content between 0 and 40 cm, the start time of runoff and the runoff
volume for ve different rainfall intensities with a constant amount of
rainfall. The start time of runoff and runoff volume decreased and increased with increasing rainfall intensity (eg. Martnez-Murillo et al.,
2012). Regression analyses were conducted to study the relationship
between rainfall intensity (ri) and the total soil moisture increase for the
040 cm soil layer (SW040 cm). The obtained tting equation was
SW040 cm =9.6ri2 +15.2ri +28.5 (r=0.9315, F=6.553, p=0.1324).
This further conrms that increases in rainfall intensity are not conducive
to soil inltration and may reduce the amount of inltration (eg. Fraser et
al., 1999; Huang et al., 2010; Wischmeie and Smith, 1978). ANOVA did not
identify any signicant differences between the different rainfall intensities in terms of the average soil moisture increase (P>0.05). But signicant differences were found in the start time of runoff and runoff
volume in these experiments (p=0.05).
For modest slopes, increases in the steepness of the slop gave
higher soil moisture increases. However, as the slopes became steeper still, this relationship reversed. The overall soil moisture increases
at depths of 040 cm for four gradients in SW boxes with rainfall intensities of 0.751.0 mm min 1 are shown in Fig. 7 and Table 5. A
gradient of 17.6% was most favorable for soil inltration; similar ndings have been reported previously (Fu et al., 2008; Huang et al.,
2010). The soil moisture increases for slopes of 8.8% and 17.6% slope
were more than twice as large as those for slopes of 26.8% and
36.4%. The data of the soil moisture changes at depths of 040 cm revealed that soil permeability increased rstly and reduced afterward
with increasing gradient. Because more depositional crusts might
occur on gentler slopes (Valentin, 1991), resulting in decreasing soil
inltration. However, much runoff volume occurring on the steeper

Fig. 7. ASMI for each layer and slope position at the end of rainfall for four slope angles.

Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Table 5
The average soil moisture increase at depths of 040 cm for four slope angles.
Slope angles
8.8%
Average increase in soil moisture at depths 31.0
of 040 cm/mm
5.6a
Mean rainfall amount/mm
45.7
9.1a
Start time of runoff/min
12.8
4.8a
Runoff volume/l
12.6
6.4a
Number of rainfall events
11

17.6%

26.8%

36.4%

41.3
7.2a
46.7
9.3a
15.6
4.8a
8.4
5.0a
12

16.8
2.1b
45.7
9.0a
6.3
3.9b
17.2
4.2b
19

17.9
2.0b
45.4
9.4a
5.8
5.0b
21.7
4.6b
19

gradient destroys the crusts and therefore favors greater inltration

(Poesen, 1986). Janeau et al. (2003) also revealed this conclusion
based on 15 eld runoff plots. The start time of runoff decreased
with increasing gradient in this study, which is opposite to the results
of Martnez-Murillo et al. (2012). The soil moisture increase, the start
time of runoff and runoff volume for the 8.8% slope differed signicantly from those for the 26.8% and 36.4% slopes, as did that for the
17.6% slope (p = 0.05).
3.3. Recharge coefcient
The recharge coefcient denotes the percentage of the total rainfall that ends up as inltration water. It thus provides a measure of
the efciency of rainfall-inltration and also indirectly describes the
proportion of the rainfall that is lost as runoff (Li and Shao, 2007b).
The recharge coefcient is therefore an important parameter for understanding the relationships between rainfall, runoff and inltration.
If we let ri, G, t and q represent rainfall intensity, slope gradient, rainfall duration and total runoff amount, and assume that evaporation
during rainfall is negligible, the recharge coefcient (Rc) can be
obtained by the following equation:
Rc r i tcosGq=r i tcosG 1q=r i tcosG

When the rainfall is under manual control, ri and t can be held

constant. Under such circumstances, the inltration recharge coefcient is highly dependent on the rate or amount of inltration. We
calculated the inltration recharge coefcient for 80 rainfall events;

the mean values for different underlying surfaces are plotted in

Fig. 8. The smallest recharge coefcients were observed in BL boxes,
uctuating between 19.5 and 95.8% with a mean value of 54.9%.
This indicates that most of the rain that fell on the BL boxes ended
up as runoff. Boxes with vegetation cover had greater recharge coefcients than BL boxes, with an average value of 78.0%. More time
was needed to form a stable runoff ow in boxes with vegetation,
which increased the time during which inltration could occur. Furthermore, roots in soil formed different sizes of non-capillary pores
(especially Ryegrass, which produced quantities of roots), which
would be expected to increase the rate of inltration to some degree
(Li et al., 1992; Wang et al., 2005; Yun et al., 2006). The recharge
coefcients for PM boxes, SW boxes and RS boxes uctuated between
57.9 and 98.3%, 60.9 and 94.3% and 56.1 and 97.1%, respectively,
which is largely consistent with the results of Fu et al. (2008), who
investigated untilled elds using simulated rainfall. Variance analysis
showed that there were signicant differences (p = 0.05) in the recharge coefcients for BL boxes and vegetated-boxes, but no differences among boxes with vegetation cover.
The rainfall intensity, vegetation cover, slope, initial soil moisture,
and other factors are all likely to affect the inltration recharge coefcient. In order to conveniently compare the inuence of each factor
on the recharge coefcient and minimize the error caused by differences in dimensions between parameters, the raw data were standardized according to formula (3).
X i xi xmin =xmax xmin

where Xi, xi, xmax and xmin were the standardized data, the raw data,
the maximum value of xi and minimum value of xi, respectively.
Regression analyses of these standardized data were conducted,
yielding the relationship between the recharge coefcient and the
four factors shown in Eq. (4).
Rc 0:5010:518r i 0:693cv0:207G0:259asm

Here, Rc, ri, cv, G and asm denote the recharge coefcient (%), rainfall intensity (mm min 1), vegetation cover (%), slope gradient (%)
and initial soil moisture (%), respectively. The model's high multiple
correlation coefcient, r = 0.867 (p b 0.001), indicates that it has a
high predictive capability (Table 6). All regression coefcients
reached a signicant level (Table 7). In addition, the variance ination
factors for the independent variables were far less than 10, indicating
that there were no collinearity problems with the independent variables, which further suggests that the tting model is reasonable
and feasible.
Eq. (4) indicates that the recharge coefcient decreases as the
rainfall intensity, slope gradient, and initial soil moisture increase,
and that it increases with increasing vegetation cover. Increasing
the rainfall intensity would destroy the structure of the topsoil and
form soil seals (Abu-Awwad, 1997; Chen and Cai, 1990; McIntyre,
1958; Schmidt, 2010), which could reduce hydraulic conductivity
(Hawke et al, 2006) and increase the runoff volume. Higher levels
of initial soil moisture would decrease the soil water potential and
water suction (Hawke et al, 2006; Philip, 1957b; Weigert and
Schmidt, 2005), which is not conducive to soil inltration. Vegetation
changes the rainfall transformation process due to effects such as

Table 6
Variance data for tting Eq. (4).

Fig. 8. Recharge coefcients for different underlying surfaces. Note: The same letter is
not signicantly different at p = 0.05 level using the least signicant difference (LSD)
method.

Regression
Residual
Total

DF

SS

MS

4
15
19

1.420
0.306
1.726

0.355
0.020
0.091

17.428

0.000

Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

Table 7
Regression coefcient tests for tting Eq. (4).

Constant
ri
cv
G
asm

Coefcient

Std. Error

VIF

0.501
0.518
0.693
0.207
0.259

0.091
0.106
0.094
0.136
0.127

5.497
4.874
7.369
1.523
2.039

b0.001
b0.001
b0.001
0.148
0.059

0.263
1.058
1.900
1.762

plant interception and retention (Llorens and Domingo, 2007). In addition, the destruction of raindrop on the topsoil was diminished by
vegetation. All the above may reduce the runoff volume and provides
more opportunities for water inltration. A comparison of the absolute values of the regression coefcients in Eq. (4) suggests that the
most important factor in determining the recharge coefcient is the
vegetation cover (Kato et al., 2009; Molina et al., 2007), followed by
the rainfall intensity and the initial soil moisture, with the slope
being the least important. However, eld studies from Chen et al.
(2011) concluded that slope gradient is as important as rainfall intensity and vegetation cover-and it may be more important than other
two factors. This difference may be caused by the distinct condition
between simulated experiments at small scale and the eld study.
Moreover, different growth periods of vegetation also exhibited varied inuence on slope runoff and inltration (Wu and Zhang, 2006).
So the effect of slope gradient, vegetation cover and scale effect on
slope runoff/inltration needs to further study.
This experiment was conducted using the disturbed soil and under
specic conditions, which is a qualitative simulated study. Therefore,
it may be difcult to transfer the results of this study to the eld due
to the effect of the specic experimental conditions on the results
(Assouline and Ben-Hur, 2006; Romero et al., 2007). The total runoff
coefcient of this experiment was 27.3% 17.1% with greater variation, which was much larger than the value from Wei et al. (2007),
but close to the results from Janeau et al. (2003). The steady nal
inltration of this experiment ranging from 0.0237 mm min 1 to
1.6793 mm min1 was close to the results from Janeau et al. (2003),
while slightly smaller than the results from Kato et al. (2009). The
mean inltration rate of this study was larger twofold than that from
Martnez-Murillo et al. (2012). Molina et al. (2007) studied the effect
of vegetation cover and land use on runoff generation in Andean hilly
slope, and their results about runoff coefcient and time to runoff for
bare/degraded land were similar with that of our studies, but for
vegetated-lands or rangelands were very different. They also found
that runoff generation is mainly controlled by the surface vegetation
cover and land management.
Bubenzer (1979) divided rainfall simulators into two types based
on compiling an inventory of 63 rainfall simulators that have been
used by researchers in recent years: (1) the drop former simulator
(Adams et al., 1957; Black, 1972); and (2) the nozzle type simulator
(Hart, 1984; Meyer, 1979; Pall et al., 1983; Schindewolf and
Schmidt, 2012). Drop former simulators are mainly used on small
plot studies of inltration and soil splash. Nozzle type simulators
are used on both large and small plot studies. In this study, we used
a needle type simulator to simulate the natural rainfall intensity and
amount for studying soil inltration under different underlying surfaces. The mean fall velocity and drop diameter are 4.78 m s 1 and
0.52 mm, respectively, which are close to that from the studies of
Schindewolf and Schmidt (2012). However, there must be some
difference on rainfall characteristics (such as the drop diameter, fall
velocity and rainfall kinetic) between the natural rainfall and our
rainfall simulator, which was also conrmed by Zhou et al. (1981).
Splash erosion may be the main water erosion in these experiments
because of the small size of soil boxes and the needle type rainfall
simulator (Martnez-Murillo et al., 2012; Morgan, 2005; Schmidt,
2000), which signicantly differed from the monsunal runoff plot and

the natural rainfall. Alves Sobrinho et al. (2008) and Schindewolf and
Schmidt (2012) installed a runoff-feeding device at the upper end of
the runoff plot to increase the energy momentum of surface runoff
and simulate the eld monsunal plot, and obtained the desired results.
Vegetation can absorb raindrop kinetic energy (Greene and Hairsine,
2004; Gyssels et al., 2005; Luce, 1997) to signicantly reduce the
amount of splash erosion, especially in small scale runoff plots. Our results showed that the treatment of PM, SW and RS were signicantly
decreased the sediment yield compared to the bare soil treatment.
Zheng et al. (2007) conrmed that the effect of vegetation on the
sediment-reduction rate in the small plot was larger than that in the
monsunal research area.
Previous studies (Blschl and Sivapalan, 1995; Boers and Ben-Asher,
1982; Li et al., 2005; Parsons et al., 2006; Poesen et al., 1994; Schindewolf
and Schmidt, 2012; Smets et al., 2008a) concluded that the plot scale has
a dramatic effect on runoff/inltration measurement. This has been conrmed by Panini et al. (1997) and Gmez and Nearing (2005). The variation of runoff production and soil inltration increased with decreasing
plot areas (Raclot et al., 2009; Smets et al., 2008b). Puigdefbregas et al.
(1998) and De Giesen et al. (2011) noted that the opportunity for inltration increased with slope length increasing and more water might
enter into soil. Moreover, the soil depth also has an important effect on
soil inltration and redistribution. Generally, the depth of detecting the
soil inltration or wet front in the eld condition was generally about
2.0 m (McLeod et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2008), and this might make
more sense. But, like most lab-experiments, it was impossible to achieve
for this study due to the xed depth of soil boxes. Therefore, the results
of this study are difcult to extrapolate data about runoff/inltration to
larger scale. Nevertheless, the results of this study also could be used
for comparative purposes and provide some useful information for better understanding the difference between bare and vegetation-covered
slopes in term of soil inltration and water redistribution.
4. Conclusions
Vegetation can improve soil permeability and soil water storage
after rain. Our results showed that there are slight differences in
water storage between BL boxes and boxes with vegetation cover at
soil depths of 010 cm. However, the difference becomes more pronounced in deeper soil layers. Over the entire soil prole between
0 and 40 cm, the moisture increase in boxes with vegetation cover
was 1.82.0 times greater than that in BL boxes. ANOVA indicated
that there were no signicant differences in moisture increase between upslope and down slope sampling sites but that there was a
signicant difference between BL boxes and RS boxes (p = 0.05).
After rainfall, the water storage increment for the 010 cm soil layer
increased with the rainfall intensity, whereas that for the entire 0
40 cm prole initially increased and then decreased gradually with increasing rainfall intensity. The relationship between the water storage
increase for the 040 cm soil layer and rainfall intensity was described
by an inverted parabola, with the highest water storage increments
(36.8 2.9 mm) occurring at a rainfall intensity of 1.5 mm min1
and the lowest (21.6 3.1 mm) occurring at 2.0 mm min1. There
were no signicant differences in the soil moisture increase for the different rainfall intensities (p> 0.05).
On increasing the slope of the boxes from 8.8% to 36.4%, the soil
moisture increase initially rose and then fell gradually. The highest
average soil moisture increase over the entire 040 cm soil prole
(41.3 7.2 mm) was achieved at a slope angle of 17.6%; on increasing
the slope to 36.4%, the soil moisture increase declined sharply, to
17.9 2.0 mm. ANOVA revealed that there was a signicant difference in the water storage increase between gradual slopes (8.8%
and 17.6%) and steep slopes (26.8% and 36.4%).
Vegetation signicantly increased wetting front's migration distance and could substantially increase soil water storage after rain,
as well as prolong the soil redistribution process. We studied two

Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013

J. Huang et al. / Catena xxx (2012) xxxxxx

underlying surfaces (RS and BL boxes) under similar conditions and

found that the wetting front in the RS box reached a soil depth of
3040 cm whereas in the BL box it reached only the 2030 cm
layer. Moreover, the soil moisture content in the RS box increased
by more than a factor of two whereas that in the BL box was much
less substantial. The water redistribution process continued in the
RS box even after the BL box had almost achieved a steady state
21 h after the termination of rainfall.
The BL boxes had the lowest inltration recharge coefcients of all
surface types studied, with an average value of 54.9% for 20 rainfall
events. The average value for boxes with vegetation cover was 1.5
times that for BL boxes. We used regression analyses to express the
recharge coefcient as a function of the rainfall intensity, vegetation
cover, slope gradient, and initial soil water content. The expression
so obtained indicates that the recharge coefcient declines gradually
with increasing rainfall intensity, slope, and initial soil water content,
and that it increases with the extent of vegetation cover. Moreover,
the vegetation cover was the factor with the greatest impact on the
recharge coefcient.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Dr. Juan Wang, Dr. Xidong Gao and Dr. Min
Li for their valuable comments on this manuscript. This work was
jointly supported by the Special Foundation of National Science &
Technology Supporting Plan (2011BAD29B09), the Supporting Project of Young Technology Nova of Shaanxi Province (2010KJXX04),
the Supporting Plan of Young Elites of Northwest A&F University,
the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31172039) and
the 111 Project of the Chinese Education Ministry (No. B12007).
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Please cite this article as: Huang, J., et al., Effects of rainfall intensity, underlying surface and slope gradient on soil inltration under simulated
rainfall experiments, Catena (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.10.013