Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4064
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4064
02 Sep 2025
 | 02 Sep 2025
Status: this preprint is open for discussion and under review for Geoscientific Model Development (GMD).

Advancing Ecohydrological Modelling: Coupling LPJ-GUESS with ParFlow for Integrated Vegetation and Surface-Subsurface Hydrology Simulations

Zitong Jia, Shouzhi Chen, Yongshuo H. Fu, David Martín Belda, David Wårlind, Stefan Olin, Chongyu Xu, and Jing Tang

Abstract. Climate change accelerates the global hydrological cycle, which has escalating impacts on human health and the socioeconomic development. However, many existing Earth system models neglect the more complex processes of topography-driven vegetation-surface-groundwater interactions, thereby failing to accurately capture climate-hydrological responses. To address this gap, we integrate the three-dimensional surface-subsurface hydrological model ParFlow with the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS to investigate how lateral groundwater flow and vegetation dynamics jointly regulate hydrological fluxes. The fully coupled ParFlow-LPJ-GUESS (PF-LPJG) model and stand-alone LPJ-GUESS model were used to run hydrological simulations at a resolution of 10 km across the Danube River Basin. A comprehensive evaluation of multiple hydrologic variables – including streamflow, surface soil moisture (SM), evapotranspiration (ET), and water table depth (WTD) was conducted using in situ and remote sensing (RS) observations based on a 38-year (1980–2018) model simulation. The results demonstrate that the PF-LPJG model substantially improves streamflow and surface soil moisture simulations without requiring parameter calibration compared to stand-alone LPJ-GUESS, mitigates the underestimation of summer low flows during dry years, increases the accuracy of peak flow timing in wet years, and achieves a Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE) > 0.5 and Spearman’s ρ > 0.80 at over 80 % of gauging stations. Seasonal soil moisture anomalies are better captured (R = 0.51) compared to satellite-based products. Additionally, the modelled WTD agrees well with in-situ monitoring-well data, as indicated by a low RSR value (~1.31, Root Mean Square Error-observations Standard deviation Ratio). Notably, the coupled model improves the representation of bare-soil evaporation and reduces transpiration-to-evaporation (T/E) ratio fluctuations, aligning more closely with the GLEAM v4.2 product. The coupled model PF-LPJG entails a mechanistic framework for capturing bidirectional interactions among surface-subsurface water, vegetation dynamics and ecosystem biogeochemical processes, which can be applied to other catchments or climatic conditions to deeply analyze climate-induced modification on vegetation-water-carbon interactions.

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Zitong Jia, Shouzhi Chen, Yongshuo H. Fu, David Martín Belda, David Wårlind, Stefan Olin, Chongyu Xu, and Jing Tang

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Zitong Jia, Shouzhi Chen, Yongshuo H. Fu, David Martín Belda, David Wårlind, Stefan Olin, Chongyu Xu, and Jing Tang

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Advancing Ecohydrological Modelling: Coupling LPJ-GUESS with ParFlow for Integrated Vegetation and Surface-Subsurface Hydrology Simulations Zitong Jia, Shouzhi Chen, Yongshuo H. Fu, David Martín Belda, David Wårlind, Stefan Olin, Chongyu Xu, Jing Tang https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16908049

Zitong Jia, Shouzhi Chen, Yongshuo H. Fu, David Martín Belda, David Wårlind, Stefan Olin, Chongyu Xu, and Jing Tang

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Short summary
Groundwater sustains vegetation and regulates land-atmosphere exchanges, but most Earth system models oversimplify its movement. Our study develops an integrated framework coupling LPJ-GUESS with the 3D hydrological model ParFlow to explicitly represent groundwater-vegetation interactions. Our results add to the evidence that three-dimensional groundwater flow strongly regulates water exchanges, and provides a powerful tool to improve simulations of water cycles in Earth system models.
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