Several research groups have recently been carrying out inspiring activities with respect to soil moisture monitoring thanks to, on the one hand, the advances in sensor technologies and, on the other hand, the development of methods and tools to manage the often-large data sets obtained. The progress in sensor technologies has led to the availability of soil moisture probes with a lower cost-to-performance ratio and straightforward calibration. The simultaneous implementation of wireless sensing systems opens up new scenarios in the realm of scientific research, especially with respect to the characterization of the spatial and temporal structure of soil moisture variability. These evolutions will positively affect the modeling of ecohydrological systems since soil moisture controls a wide array of ecological, hydrological, and meteorological processes. Two related questions come also into play: (i) what types of signal processing techniques are required to properly manage the amount of measured data and to correctly address the accuracy/precision issues, and (ii) do these evolutions present an opportunity to reduce the mismatch of scales between process dynamics, observations and model predictions?
We believe it is now time to begin discussing these questions in a session gathering together scientists who have different backgrounds and are gaining various experiences on the above and related subjects. Therefore, we solicit contributions to the following topics, but not limited to:
- Advanced techniques for monitoring soil moisture and related data management;
- Changes in soil water holding capacity due to salinity effects, biofilm effects, use of superabsorbent polymers, ecc.;
- Issues of spatio-temporal variability of soil moisture across scales;
- Soil moisture dynamics and their representation in ecohydrological models of different complexity and applied at different scales of interest, from the root zones to land surfaces;
- Environmental and anthropogenic actions affecting soil moisture evolutions;
- Advances in soil moisture monitoring and modeling for promoting soil ecosystem services.