Abstract. Climate change increases the occurrence and severity of
droughts due to increasing temperatures, altered circulation patterns, and
reduced snow occurrence. While Europe has suffered from drought events in
the last decade unlike ever seen since the beginning of weather recordings,
harmonized long-term datasets across the continent are needed to monitor
change and support predictions. Here we present soil moisture data from 66
cosmic-ray neutron sensors (CRNSs) in Europe (COSMOS-Europe for short)
covering recent drought events. The CRNS sites are distributed across Europe
and cover all major land use types and climate zones in Europe. The raw
neutron count data from the CRNS stations were provided by 24 research
institutions and processed using state-of-the-art methods. The harmonized
processing included correction of the raw neutron counts and a harmonized
methodology for the conversion into soil moisture based on available in situ
information. In addition, the uncertainty estimate is provided with the
dataset, information that is particularly useful for remote sensing and
modeling applications. This paper presents the current spatiotemporal
coverage of CRNS stations in Europe and describes the protocols for data
processing from raw measurements to consistent soil moisture products. The
data of the presented COSMOS-Europe network open up a manifold of potential
applications for environmental research, such as remote sensing data
validation, trend analysis, or model assimilation. The dataset could be of
particular importance for the analysis of extreme climatic events at the
continental scale. Due its timely relevance in the scope of climate change
in the recent years, we demonstrate this potential application with a brief
analysis on the spatiotemporal soil moisture variability. The dataset,
entitled “Dataset of COSMOS-Europe: A European network of Cosmic-Ray
Neutron Soil Moisture Sensors”, is shared via Forschungszentrum Jülich:
https://doi.org/10.34731/x9s3-kr48 (Bogena and Ney, 2021).
The objective of this study was to identify seasonal and spatial trends and soil salinization patterns in a part of Rhodope District irrigated land, northeastern Greece, located east of Vistonis Lagoon. The study area is irrigated from a coastal aquifer, where salt water intrusion occurs because of extensive groundwater withdrawals. Fourteen monitoring sites were established in harvest fields in the study area, where soil samples were collected. Electrical conductivity (ECe), pH, and ion concentrations were determined in the saturated paste extract of the soil samples in the laboratory using standard methods. A clear tendency was observed for ECe to increase from April to September, i.e., within the irrigation period, indicating the effect of saline groundwater to soil. In the last years, the change from moderately sensitive (e.g., corn) to moderately tolerant crops (e.g., cotton) in the south part of the study area indicates the impacts of soil salinity. The study proposes management methods to alleviate this problem.
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