RUSWET-AGRO

Soil moisture datasets for 78 districts have been prepared by Vladimir Zabelin from the Russian Hydrometeorological Center, Moscow, Russia. The soil moisture observations were taken using the gravimetric technique and were provided as volumetric plant-available water [%] for the upper 20 cm and 1 m soil layers at agricultural fields. Thus volumetric soil moisture [m^3/m^3] was calculated by first extracting texture properties of all sites from the Harmonized World Soil Database and subsequently calculating the wilting levels for all stations using the equations of Saxton and Rawls (2006). As this dataset was designed for monitoring of soil moisture at agricultural fields datasets were seperately available for spring cereal crops and winter cereal crops for all locations. In the ISMN stations with the suffix "a" represent spring cereal crops while stations with "b" illustrate winter cereal crops. Measurements are available during the growing period from 1987 to 1988, three times a month.