The International Soil Moisture Network: Serving Earth system science for over a decade

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Documents

  • Wouter Dorigo
  • Irene Himmelbauer
  • Daniel Aberer
  • Lukas Schremmer
  • Ivana Petrakovic
  • Luca Zappa
  • Wolfgang Preimesberger
  • Angelika Xaver
  • Frank Annor
  • Jonas Ardö
  • Dennis Baldocchi
  • Marco Bitelli
  • Günter Blöschl
  • Heye Bogena
  • Luca Brocca
  • Jean Christophe Calvet
  • J. Julio Camarero
  • Giorgio Capello
  • Minha Choi
  • Michael C. Cosh
  • Nick Van De Giesen
  • Istvan Hajdu
  • Jaakko Ikonen
  • Kasturi Devi Kanniah
  • Ileen De Kat
  • Gottfried Kirchengast
  • Pankaj Kumar Rai
  • Jenni Kyrouac
  • Kristine Larson
  • Suxia Liu
  • Alexander Loew
  • Mahta Moghaddam
  • José Martínez Fernández
  • Cristian Mattar Bader
  • Renato Morbidelli
  • Jan P. Musial
  • Elise Osenga
  • Michael A. Palecki
  • Thierry Pellarin
  • George P. Petropoulos
  • Isabella Pfeil
  • Jarrett Powers
  • Alan Robock
  • Christoph Rüdiger
  • Udo Rummel
  • Michael Strobel
  • Zhongbo Su
  • Ryan Sullivan
  • Andrej Varlagin
  • Mariette Vreugdenhil
  • Jeffrey Walker
  • Jun Wen
  • Fred Wenger
  • Jean Pierre Wigneron
  • Mel Woods
  • Kun Yang
  • Yijian Zeng
  • Xiang Zhang
  • Marek Zreda
  • Stephan DIetrich
  • Alexander Gruber
  • Peter Van Oevelen
  • Wolfgang Wagner
  • Klaus Scipal
  • Matthias Drusch
  • Roberto Sabia

In 2009, the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) was initiated as a community effort, funded by the European Space Agency, to serve as a centralised data hosting facility for globally available in situ soil moisture measurements . The ISMN brings together in situ soil moisture measurements collected and freely shared by a multitude of organisations, harmonises them in terms of units and sampling rates, applies advanced quality control, and stores them in a database. Users can freely retrieve the data from this database through an online web portal (https://ismn.earth/en/, last access: 28 October 2021). Meanwhile, the ISMN has evolved into the primary in situ soil moisture reference database worldwide, as evidenced by more than 3000 active users and over 1000 scientific publications referencing the data sets provided by the network. As of July 2021, the ISMN now contains the data of 71 networks and 2842 stations located all over the globe, with a time period spanning from 1952 to the present. The number of networks and stations covered by the ISMN is still growing, and approximately 70 % of the data sets contained in the database continue to be updated on a regular or irregular basis. The main scope of this paper is to inform readers about the evolution of the ISMN over the past decade, including a description of network and data set updates and quality control procedures. A comprehensive review of the existing literature making use of ISMN data is also provided in order to identify current limitations in functionality and data usage and to shape priorities for the next decade of operations of this unique community-based data repository.

Original languageEnglish
JournalHydrology and Earth System Sciences
Volume25
Issue number11
Pages (from-to)5749-5804
Number of pages56
ISSN1027-5606
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Nov 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
In this study, we reviewed the first decade of operations of the ISMN. Besides satisfactorily fulfilling its initial target, i.e. supporting satellite soil moisture product validation and calibration, many additional more or less foreseen uses have emerged. In addition, an increasing number of services and product development chains have routinely included the use of ISMN data in their operational structure. The ISMN started as research activity funded by ESA, and ever since, ESA have provided continuous financial support for ongoing research, development, and operations. In spring 2021, a milestone was achieved when the German Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure announced that it will commit to permanently fund the ISMN operations and development from late 2021. The execution will be with the German Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) and the International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change (ICWRGC) based in Koblenz, Germany. At the same time, all network data sets have always been freely contributed by dedicated researchers. To guarantee the availability of these resources for climate and environmental monitoring also for the next decade, we plead with governments and international bodies for systematic funding of its participating data-providing networks too.

Funding Information:
The Cosmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System (COSMOS; Zreda et al., 2012) started in 2009 with a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation as a 4-year project for demonstration of the then-new technology of sensing soil moisture with cosmogenic neutrons (Zreda et al., 2008). On the completion of the project, the network had 60 sites, most of them in the USA and a few in South America, Europe, and Africa. The network produces hourly soil moisture data, available in real time, to all, without restrictions. After the project funding ended in 2013, the network operations continued with the support of Quaesta Instruments, a private company. The current status is active, but the sensors are being relocated and repurposed.

Funding Information:
The former German UDC_SMOS network was hosted by the Department of Geography at the University of Munich, in co-operation with the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture, and funded by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). It was located in grassland in the Bavarian region around Munich as an official European SMOS calibration/validation test site. In total, 11 stations provided soil moisture data from 2007 until 2011, up to 40 cm depth, as measured by several types of sensors (Loew et al., 2009; Schlenz et al., 2012a).

Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. The authors greatly acknowledge the financial support provided by ESA through various projects including the following: SMOSnet International Soil Moisture Network (grant no. 4000102722/10/NL/FF/fk) and Operations (grant no. 3-13185/NL/FF/fk), IDEAS+ (grant no. TVUK/AG/18/02082), QA4EO (grant no. TPZV/UK/AG/19/02321), and QA4SM (grant no. 4000135204/21//I-BG). Additional funding for the methodological advances has been received from the EU FP7 EartH2Observe project (grant no. 603608), the EU H2020 GROW project (grant no. 690199), and the QA4SM project funded by the Austrian Space Applications Programme 14 (grant no. 866004). Network funding has been provided by TWIGA (grant no. 776691). Andrej Varla-gin has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant no. 19-04-01234-a). Alexander Gruber also received funding (grant nos. FWO-1224320N and FWO-1530019N). We acknowledge the endorsement of various international bodies, including CEOS, WCRP GEWEX, GCOS, GTN-H, and GEO. We greatly thank all staff members from the participating networks for their continued technical support. The authors acknowledge TU Wien Bibliothek for financial support through its open-access funding programme.

Funding Information:
Financial support. The authors greatly acknowledge the financial support provided by ESA through various projects including the following: SMOSnet International Soil Moisture Network (grant no. 4000102722/10/NL/FF/fk) and Operations (grant no. 3-13185/NL/FF/fk), IDEAS+ (grant no. TVUK/AG/18/02082), QA4EO (grant no. TPZV/UK/AG/19/02321), and QA4SM (grant no. 4000135204/21//I-BG). Additional funding for the methodological advances has been received from the EU FP7 EartH2Observe project (grant no. 603608), the EU H2020 GROW project (grant no. 690199), and the QA4SM project funded by the Austrian Space Applications Programme 14 (grant no. 866004). Network funding has been provided by TWIGA (grant no. 776691). Andrej Varlagin has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant no. 19-04-01234-a). Alexander Gruber also received funding (grant nos. FWO-1224320N and FWO-1530019N). TU Wien Bibliothek has provided financial support through its open-access funding programme.

Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) 2021.

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