Pedotransfer functions and Land Surface Parameterization
Co-lead
Lutz Weihermüller Yonggen Zhang
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Tianjin University
Institute Agrosphere IBG-3 School of Earth System Science
l.weihermueller@fz-juelich.de zhangyonggen2008@gmail.com
Tentative list of Participants
Attila Nemes attila.nemes@nibio.no; Surya Gupta surya.gupta@unibas.ch; Budiman Minasny budiman.minasny@sydney.edu.au; Brigitta Szabó toth.brigitta@atk.hu; Yijian Zeng y.zeng@utwente.nl; Zhongwang Wei zhongwang007@gmail.com; Harry Vereecken: h.vereecken@fz-juelich.de; Marcel G. Schaap: mschaap@email.arizona.edu; Peter Lehmann peter.lehmann@env.ethz.ch; Anne Verhoef a.verhoef@reading.ac.uk; John Koestel johannes.koestel@agroscope.admin.ch; Sara Bonetti sara.bonetti@epfl.ch; Daniel Hirmas dhirmas@ttu.edu; Pamela Sullivan Pamela.Sullivan@oregonstate.edu; Tobias KD Weber tobias.weber@uni-kassel.de; Caldwell, Todd G tcaldwell@usgs.gov; Vilim Filipovic v.filipovic@uq.edu.au; Toby Marthews tobmar@ceh.ac.uk; Garry Feng gary.feng@usda.gov; Jonas Allgeier jonas.allgeier@uni-tuebingen.de; Todd Skaggs todd.skaggs@usda.gov; Wim Cornelis Wim.Cornelis@UGent.be; Efstathios (Statis) Diamantopoulos efstathios.diamantopoulos@uni-bayreuth.de; Athanasios (Thanos) Paschalis a.paschalis@imperial.ac.uk; Mouiz Yessoufou ymouizy@gmail.com; Rajiv Srivastava rajiv.sriastava@uni-hohenheim.de; Shawkat B.M. Hassan shawkat.hassan@unibas.it; Marta Vasconcelos Ottoni marta.ottoni@sgb.gov.br; Sarem Norouzi sarem.nrz@gmail.com; Patrick Duddek Patrick.duddek@usys.ethz.ch; Nedal Aqel nedal.aqel@usys.ethz.ch; Aurélien Lengrand aurelien.lengrand@uclouvain.be; Thomas Smith thomas.Smith@cranfield.ac.uk; Paolo Nasta paolo,nasta@unina.it; Sampaio, Wilk wilk.sampaio@irta.cat; Bravo Pena Sebastian sebastian.bravopena@wur.nl; Tobias Klöffel tk@plen.ku.dk
Aim of the working group
The working group ‘Pedotransfer functions and land surface parameterization’ aims to bring together international experts working on pedotransfer functions and land surface parametrization in different disciplines such as soil sciences, climate, and crop modelling. Hereby, the focus will be in a first step on pedotransfer functions (PTF) to estimate soil hydraulic parameters. In addition, also thermal and biogeochemical pedotransfer functions will be tackled. Within the working group urgent needs in pedotransfer and land surface parameterization development and validation will be identified. Full details of the WG aims are shown here.
Working group meetings
The working group will meet twice a year and invite all members. As the working group is open to everyone interested in pedotransfer functions, you can either subscribe as member or visitor by contacting the pedotransfer function working group leads Yonggen Zhang (zhangyonggen2008@gmail.com) or Lutz Weihermüller (l.weihermueller@fz-juelich.de). The minutes of the working group meetings can be found here
+++++++++++++++++++++++ New Publications ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Shi, W., Zhang Y., Weihermüller, L., Nemes, A. Schaap, M.G., and Vereecken, H. 2026. Correlation of pedotransfer function residuals with input variables and the effect of database similarity on predictive performance, Journal of Hydrology, 671. 135192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2026.135192
Gupta, S., Papritz, A., Lehmann, P., Hengl, T., Bonetti, S., and Or, D.: Global Soil Hydraulic Properties dataset based on legacy site observations and robust parameterization. Scientific Data, 9, 444, 2022, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01481-5.
Gupta, S., Papritz, A., Lehmann, P., Hengl, T., Bonetti, S., and Or, D.: Global Mapping of Soil Water Characteristics Parameters- Fusing Curated Data with Machine Learning and Environmental Covariates. Remote Sensing, 14(8):1947, 2022, https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/8/1947.
Paschalis, A., Bonetti, S., Guo, Y., Fatichi, S. 2022. On the Uncertainty Induced by Pedotransfer Functions in Terrestrial Biosphere Modeling. Water Resources Research 58(9): e2021WR031871. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR031871
Zhang, Y., Weihermüller, L., Szabó, B., Noman, M., and Vereecken, H. 2022. Analyzing dual porosity in soil hydraulic properties using soil databases for pedotransfer function development. Vadose Zone Journal. e20227. https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/vzj2.20227
Nasta, P., Szabó, B., Romano, N. 2021. Evaluation of pedotransfer functions for predicting soil hydraulic properties: A voyage from regional to field scales across Europe. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 37: 100903. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2021.100903
Weber, T.K.D., Finkel, M., da Conceição Gonçalves, M., Vereecken, H., Diamantopoulos, E., 2020. Pedotransfer Function for the Brunswick Soil Hydraulic Property Model and Comparison to the van Genuchten‐Mualem Model. Water Resources Research, 56, e2019WR026820. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR026820
Weihermüller, L., Lehmann, P., Herbst, M., Rahmati, M., Verhoef, A., Or, D., Jacques, D., and Vereecken, H. 2021. Choice of pedotransfer functions matters when simulating soil water balance fluxes. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 13, e2020MS002404. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002404.
Zhang, Y., Schaap, M.G., Wei, Z., 2020. Development of Hierarchical Ensemble Model and Estimates of Soil Water Retention With Global Coverage. Geophysical Research Letters 47, e2020GL088819. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL088819.
Zhang, Y., Weihermüller, L., Szabó, B., Noman, M., and Vereecken, H. 2022. Analyzing dual porosity in soil hydraulic properties using soil databases for pedotransfer function development. Vadose Zone Journal. e20227. https://doi.org/10.1002/vzj2.2022..
Fuentes-Guevara,M.D., Armindo,R.A., Timm, L.C., Nemes, A. 2022. Data correlation structure controls pedotransfer function performance, Journal of Hydrology, 614, Part B,128540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128540.
+++++++++++++++++++ New Available PTF models +++++++++++++++++++++
euptfv2
The previously published European pedotransfer functions (euptfv1, Tóth et al., 2015 (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejss.12192)) were updated to provide better predictions and prediction uncertainties built into the transfer functions (euptfv2, Szabó et al., 2021). The new algorithms lead to significantly better predictions and provide a built-in prediction uncertainty computation. The influence of predictor variables on predicted soil hydraulic properties is explored and practical guidance on how to use the derived pedotransfer function is provided. The estimation algorithms are integrated into a user-friendly web application (https://ptfinterface.rissac.hu/), and in an open source R-package (https://zenodo.org/record/4281046). More information can be found here
Reference
Szabó, B., Weynants, M., and Weber, T. K. D. 2021. Updated European hydraulic pedotransfer functions with communicated uncertainties in the predicted variables (euptfv2), Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 151–175. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-151-2021
Rosetta
Rosetta (Schaap et al., 2001) is a popularly used pedotransfer function. The code is based on artificial neural network analysis coupled with bootstrap re-sampling method, which allows the estimation of van Genuchten water retention parameters (van Genuchten, 1980), saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks), and their uncertainties.
Zhang & Schaap (2017) developed a new Rosetta model (Rosetta3 model) that unify the water retention and Ks submodels into one. The models have less bias and better performance in terms of observed quantities. The new model provides covariance matrix of parameters and also a more accurate parameter distribution (α-stable distribution).
A web-based interface of the Rosetta model developed by Todd Skaggs (USDA-ARS) and Ehsan Ghane (Michigan State University) can be accessed, respectively, by https://www.handbook60.org/rosetta/ and https://dsiweb.cse.msu.edu/rosetta/.
The python version (compatible with python 2 and python 3) of Rosetta 1 and Rosetta 3 code is available for download at https://github.com/YonggenZhang/Rosetta along with a user manual. This code is intended for users/developers familiar with the python programming language, and it works in Linux, Windows 7+, and Mac OSX, independent of the Operating System.
The rosetta-soil python package by Todd Skaggs (USDA-ARS) is now on pypi https://pypi.org/project/rosetta-soil/ and can be installed with pip install rosetta-soil. The project page with instructions is at https://github.com/usda-ars-ussl/rosetta-soil
Reference
Schaap, M.G., Leij, F.J., van Genuchten, M.T., 2001. ROSETTA: A computer program for estimating soil hydraulic parameters with hierarchical pedotransfer functions. Journal of Hydrology 251, 163–176. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022169401004668
Zhang, Y., Schaap, M.G., 2017. Weighted Recalibration of the Rosetta Pedotransfer Model with Improved Estimates of Hydraulic Parameter Distributions and Summary Statistics (Rosetta3). Journal of Hydrology 547, 39–53. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022169417300057