Soil moisture refers to the water present in the uppermost part of a field soil and not only controls the partitioning of rainfall into infiltration and runoff, but also affects the partitioning of incoming solar radiation into sensible and latent heat flux. Biogeochemical and microbial processes are also strongly affected by changes in soil water. As a consequence, soil moisture is considered a key variable in environmental sciences and routinely measured in a wide variety of disciplines, including soil physics, hydrometeorology, agricultural sciences, and microbiology.
Soil moisture values are typically monitored at point-scale using traditional TDR or dielectric probes, or are retrieved at large-scales from satellite or air-borne remote sensors. The first edition of this seminar, held last year at EGU2014, was very successful and specifically dealt with the dielectric methods showing their major advantages and limitation especially in view of the recent progress obtained through scientific researches and manufacturing advances.

With growing efforts to investigate ecological and hydrometeorological process at hyper-resolution (~1 km2), estimates of soil moisture at field scale have become of paramount importance. Recent techniques such as distributed wireless sensor networks, electromagnetic induction, ground penetrating radar, and cosmic-ray neutron sensors are aimed at bridging this spatiotemporal gap.
Therefore, this time the Soil Physics sub-division of Soil System Science at EGU is offering a second edition of the seminar focusing on recent techniques for local to field scale soil moisture monitoring. The seminar is intended as an opportunity for the attendees to acquaint themselves with different available technologies, and to discuss the accuracy that can be expected from each under varying environmental conditions and soil types.

Speakers: Prof. Nunzio Romano, from the Univ. of Naples, Italy, is Science Officers of EGU-SSS Division and will introduce the seminar; he will also give an overview about soil moisture spatiotemporal variability and aggregation issues. Dr. Georg von Unold, President of UMS GmbH, Germany, with his experience in the field of development and production of environmental instrumentation, will bring a unique perspective on the design and operation of soil-water sensor networks and related data management and quality control. Dr. Rafael Rosolem, Lecturer at the University of Bristol and one of the members of the COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System (COSMOS) project, will discuss recent development and applications of the cosmic-ray neutron sensor for integrated soil moisture monitoring.