Rogier van der Velde, Suhyb Salama
Soil moisture is an important state variable controlling numerous biophysical processes and has a prognostic value for the societal relevant events, such as drought and floods. On the other hand, soil moisture is highly variable in both space and time, which makes it extremely difficult to quantify with any kind of technique.
The Water Resources department of the Faculty of ITC operates since 2009 a network consisting of 19 stations in the Twente region where soil moisture and temperature is being measured at nominal depths of 5, 10, 20, 40, and 80 cm. The monitoring stations are typically placed at the edges of fields and the question remains how representative are these locations for an entire field. To address this issue several independent field experiments have carried out. It will be the student’s task to collect and harmonize the spatially distributed soil moisture data sets and apply statistical methods that support quantitative statements on how representative a monitoring station is for an individual field.
The objective of this MSc research topic is to analyze the spatial variability among soil moisture measurements that have been collected in Twente over the years from 2009 to 2019. A network of twenty soil moisture monitoring stations has been operational during this period. The stations are typically placed at the edge of individual parcels and the question remained how representative are the measurements made at the location for the field.
Several experiments have been conducted by individual researchers to address this issue consisting mostly of the collection spatially distributed measurements inside fields.
The task of the student will be to analyze all available spatially distributed measurements collected in previous years and to make quantitatively supported statements on how representative the measurements made at the stations are for the fields in Twente.
The methodology that is expected to be followed includes the:
* Collection and harmonization of the spatially distributed soil moisture measurements.
* Application of the statistical methods that supports statements on the spatial soil moisture variability;
* Evaluation of the field-scale spatial soil moisture variability with respect to elevation, land cover and soil type.
Western and Bloschl, Journal of Hydrology, 1999
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169498002327
Mohanty and Skaggs, Advances in Water Resources, 2001
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