Spatio-temporal soil moisture retrieval at the catchment scale  using a dense network of cosmic-ray neutron sensors

Heistermann, Maik; Francke, Till; Schrön, Martin; Oswald, Sascha E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4807-2021

Articles | Volume 25, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4807-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4807-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 9

Research article

|

03 Sep 2021

Research article |

| 03 Sep 2021

Spatio-temporal soil moisture retrieval at the catchment scale using a dense network of cosmic-ray neutron sensors

Maik Heistermann, Till Francke, Martin Schrön, and Sascha E. Oswald

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-4807-2021-supplement

Data sets

A massive coverage experiment of cosmic ray neutron sensors for soil moisture observation in a pre-alpine catchment in SE-Germany (part I: core data) B. Fersch, T. Francke, M. Heistermann, M. Schrön, V. Döpper, and J. Jakobi https://doi.org/10.23728/b2share.282675586fb94f44ab2fd09da0856883

Model code and software

cosmic-sense/jfc1-analysis-hess: After major revision of the manuscript. M. Heistermann https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4438921

Short summary

Cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) is a powerful technique for retrieving representative estimates of soil moisture in footprints extending over hectometres in the horizontal and decimetres in the vertical. This study, however, demonstrates the potential of CRNS to obtain spatio-temporal patterns of soil moisture beyond isolated footprints. To that end, we analyse data from a unique observational campaign that featured a dense network of more than 20 neutron detectors in an area of just 1 km².