Articles | Volume 28, issue 24
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-5419-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-5419-2024
Research article
 | 
17 Dec 2024
Research article |  | 17 Dec 2024

Improved representation of soil moisture processes through incorporation of cosmic-ray neutron count measurements in a large-scale hydrologic model

Eshrat Fatima, Rohini Kumar, Sabine Attinger, Maren Kaluza, Oldrich Rakovec, Corinna Rebmann, Rafael Rosolem, Sascha E. Oswald, Luis Samaniego, Steffen Zacharias, and Martin Schrön

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Cited articles

Albergel, C., Calvet, J.-C., de Rosnay, P., Balsamo, G., Wagner, W., Hasenauer, S., Naeimi, V., Martin, E., Bazile, E., Bouyssel, F., and Mahfouf, J.-F.: Cross-evaluation of modelled and remotely sensed surface soil moisture with in situ data in southwestern France, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 14, 2177–2191, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-14-2177-2010, 2010. a
Altdorff, D., Oswald, S. E., Zacharias, S., Zengerle, C., Dietrich, P., Mollenhauer, H., Attinger, S., and Schrön, M.: Toward Large-Scale Soil Moisture Monitoring Using Rail-Based Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensing, Water Resour. Res., 59, e2022WR033514, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033514, 2023. a
Andreasen, M., Jensen, K. H., Desilets, D., Franz, T. E., Zreda, M., Bogena, H. R., and Looms, M. C.: Status and perspectives on the cosmic-ray neutron method for soil moisture estimation and other environmental science applications, Vadose Zone J., 16, 1–11, 2017.  a
Avery, W. A., Finkenbiner, C., Franz, T. E., Wang, T., Nguy-Robertson, A. L., Suyker, A., Arkebauer, T., and Muñoz-Arriola, F.: Incorporation of globally available datasets into the roving cosmic-ray neutron probe method for estimating field-scale soil water content, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 3859–3872, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-3859-2016, 2016. a
Baatz, R., Bogena, H., Franssen, H.-J. H., Huisman, J., Qu, W., Montzka, C., and Vereecken, H.: Calibration of a catchment scale cosmic-ray probe network: A comparison of three parameterization methods, J. Hydrol., 516, 231–244, 2014. a, b
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Short summary
This study establishes a framework to incorporate cosmic-ray neutron measurements into the mesoscale Hydrological Model (mHM). We evaluate different approaches to estimate neutron counts within the mHM using the Desilets equation, with uniformly and non-uniformly weighted average soil moisture, and the physically based code COSMIC. The data improved not only soil moisture simulations but also the parameterisation of evapotranspiration in the model.
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