Existing techniques measure soil moisture either at a point or over a large area many kilometers across. To bridge these two scales, we used the mobile cosmic-ray probe, or cosmic-ray rover, an instrument similar to the recently developed COSMOS probe, but bigger and mobile. This study explores the challenges and opportunities for making maps of soil moisture over large areas using the cosmic-ray rover. In 2012, soil moisture was mapped 22 times in a 25 km x 40 km survey area of the Tucson Basin at 1 km² resolution, i.e., at a scale comparable to that of a pixel for the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission. The soil moisture distribution is influenced mainly by climatic variations, notably by the North American monsoon, which resulted in a systematic change in the regional variance as a function of the mean soil moisture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/293622 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Chrisman, Bobby Brady |
| Contributors | Zreda, Marek, Zeng, Xubin, Shuttleworth, Jim, Franz, Trenton |
| Publisher | The University of Arizona. |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Electronic Thesis |
| Rights | Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. |
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