Natural vegetation covers as indicators of the soil water content in a semiarid mountainous watershed

This paper investigates the use of the vegetative state of natural covers as an indicator of soil moisture conditions at the end of the dry season in order to evaluate the cumulative effect of the hydrological regime. To achieve this, the three major vegetation covers in a mountainous semiarid environment in southern Spain were selected. Temporal and spatial trends of NDVI from Landsat-TM images were computed and related to the different hydrological patterns of variables in the study site, which were obtained with the hydrological WiMMed model. The heterogeneity in the hydrological behavior during the study period (914.5mm of annual rainfall in the wettest year (2009–2010) and 284.4mm in the driest year (2004–2005)) was reflected in the annual differences in NDVI values with steady mean NDVI values in coniferous vegetation (0.5–0.6) and more variable values in scrub cover. Both Correlation Analysis and Principal Component Analysis showed correlations among the different states of the vegetation cover, the variables involved in the soil water balance and those related to the snow dynamics of the antecedent year. Exponential fits were obtained between the mean annual soil water content and NDVI values with Pearson r2 coefficients of over 0.7 in scrub cover. In certain years, the best fits were also found in scrub cover with r2 values of up to 0.9. These results demonstrate the relationship between soil water content, the vigor of the natural vegetation and the hydrological characteristics of the antecedent year. The expressions obtained may serve to adjust the soil water content at the beginning of a hydrological year and to use the scrub cover as an indicator of the soil water balance in the area for a given year.