A project for climatologic mapping of soil water content in Trentino

Project IdroClima had the aim of studying the high-resolution (500 m) water content of Trentino soils under a climatological perspective. The water budget model GEOtop 2.0 was applied to a 21-year period (1992- 2012), corresponding to the hourly coverage of meteorological data. GEOtop accepts a thorough meteorological input, including several atmospheric variables. Pedology was described with a uniform soil over the domain, with 9 theoretical layers. Soil use was input according to the CORINE Land Cover classes. A qualitative validation of the model was done with pre-existent probe measurements of soil moisture (2006 - 2008) and with comparison with measured data from weather stations. A thorough set of post-processing was carried out, to consider several possible aggregation algorithms for daily maps. The main results are analyzed and discussed in this work. The simulation shows geographical patterns of proneness to drought or to proximity with a wider water availability, according to areas