A dense network of cosmic-ray neutron sensors for soil moisture observation in a pre-alpine headwater catchment in Germany
| Autor: | Andreas Güntner, Jannis Weimar, Ingo Völksch, Mandy Kasner, Birgit Kleinschmit, Vladimir Mares, Ulrich Schmidt, Daniel Rasche, Veronika Döpper, Hannes Mollenhauer, Sascha E. Oswald, Markus Köhli, Tobias Gränzig, Till Francke, Amol Patil, Theresa Blume, Michael Förster, Christian Budach, Gabriele Baroni, Heye Bogena, Steffen Zacharias, Harald Kunstmann, Jannis Jakobi, Sandra Szulc-Seyfried, Benjamin Fersch, Marek Zreda, Harrie-Jan Hendricks-Franssen, Bernd Heber, Lena M. Scheiffele, Martin Schrön, Ralf Kiese, Maik Heistermann |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Hydrology
geography geography.geographical_feature_category 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences 0207 environmental engineering Drainage basin Sampling (statistics) Context (language use) 02 engineering and technology 01 natural sciences Footprint Hydrology (agriculture) Environmental science 020701 environmental engineering Water content Wireless sensor network Groundwater 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| ISSN: | 1866-3516 |
| Popis: | Monitoring soil moisture is still a challenge: it varies strongly in space and time and at various scales while well established sensors typically suffer from a small spatial support. With a sensor footprint up to several hectares, Cosmic-Ray Neutron Sensing (CRNS) is an emerging technology to address that challenge. So far, the CRNS method has typically been applied with single sensors or in sparse national scale networks. This study presents, for the first time, a dense network of 24 CRNS stations that covered, from May to July 2019, an area of just 1 km2: the pre-alpine Rott headwater catchment in Southern Germany which is characterized by strong soil moisture gradients in a heterogeneous landscape with forests and grasslands. With substantially overlapping sensor footprints, that network was designed to study root zone soil moisture dynamics at the catchment-scale. The observations of the dense CRNS network were complemented by extensive measurements that allow to study soil moisture variability at various spatial scales: roving (mobile) CRNS units, remotely sensed thermal images from Unmanned Areal Systems (UAS), permanent and temporary wireless sensor networks, profile probes as well as comprehensive manual soil sampling. Since neutron counts are also affected by hydrogen pools other than soil moisture, vegetation biomass was monitored in forest and grassland patches, as well as meteorological variables; discharge and groundwater tables were recorded to support hydrological modeling experiments. As a result, we provide a unique and comprehensive dataset to several research communities: to those who investigate the retrieval of soil moisture from cosmic-ray neutron sensing, to those who study the variability of soil moisture at different spatio-temporal scales, and to those who intend to better understand the role of root-zone soil moisture dynamics in the context of catchment and groundwater hydrology, as well as land – atmosphere exchange processes. The data set is available through EUDAT, splitted into the two subsets https://doi.org/10.23728/b2share.85fe0f9dac0f48df9215c17e65d1f1e1 (Fersch et al., 2020a) and https://doi.org/10.23728/b2share.93ed99e486904d48a8a6a68083066198 (Fersch et al., 2020b). |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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