Research and Application of Cosmic-ray Fast Neutron Method to Measure Soil Moisture in the Field

Jiao Qishun; Zhu Zhongli; Liu Shaomin; Du Fan; Jin Rui

doi:10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2013.10.1136

Advances in Earth Science >

2013 , Vol. 28 >Issue 10: 1136 - 1143

DOI: https://doi.org/10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2013.10.1136

Research and Application of Cosmic-ray Fast Neutron Method to Measure Soil Moisture in the Field

Jiao Qishun ,
Zhu Zhongli ,
Liu Shaomin ,
Du Fan ,
Jin Rui

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1. State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, School of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; 2. Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China

Received date: 2013-04-07

Online published: 2013-10-10

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Abstract

It is very difficult to measure large region soil moisture. In recent years, measurement of surface soil moisture by the cosmicray fast neutron probe has gradually attracted more attention. By this passive, non-invasive and intermediate scale measurement, soil moisture at a horizontal scale of around 300 m can be observed, which makes this method available to fill the gap between little scale of traditional point measurement and large scale of remote sensing in the measurement of soil moisture. In this paper, Cosmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System (COSMOS) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) were used to observe field soil moisture in Zhangye Oasis. The results of the COSMOS soil moisture well reflected the variation trend of soil moisture at the field scale. There were some regular changes with the cosmicray soil moisture during the irrigation period. Combined with irrigation data in cosmic-ray probe footprint, a bimodal change was showed in the cosmic-ray soil moisture figure during irrigation period. This was because that the order of irrigation of the three communities was different in cosmic-ray probe footprint. WSN data were used to validate this result and we found that root-mean-square error between cosmic-ray soil moisture and SoilNET average soil moisture was very large during irrigation periods because of the impact of cosmic-ray measurement theory. While root-mean-square error would decrease from 0.037 m³/m³ to 0.028 m³/m³ after we eliminated the data in irrigation period. So COSMOS can be used to measure field soil moisture under high heterogeneity condition and provide truly ground data for the validation of remote sensing

Key words： Field scale; Soil water content; Heihe River Basin.; Wireless Sensor Network

Cite this article

Jiao Qishun , Zhu Zhongli , Liu Shaomin , Du Fan , Jin Rui . Research and Application of Cosmic-ray Fast Neutron Method to Measure Soil Moisture in the Field[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2013 , 28(10) : 1136 -1143 . DOI: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2013.10.1136

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