Soil Moisture Observations for Eurasia and Midwestern United States

The Global Soil Moisture Data Bank resides at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey, USA. The data bank consists of observed soil moisture data, archived at Rutgers, for 6 regions of the globe as well as links to additional, external data sets of both observed and modeled soil moisture values.

The local data sets include data from soil moisture observation for over 600 stations from a large variety of global climates, including the former Soviet Union, China, Mongolia, India, and Iowa and Illinois in the United States. Most of the data are in situ gravimetric observations of soil moisture; all extend for at least 6 years
and most for more than 15 years. The frequency of observations as well as the depths of the observations vary with each region. The earliest record is from 1952 and the most recent, from 1996. The frequency of observations is generally 2 to 3 times per month during the summer months. During the winter months the number of observations drops off or, for some sites, completely stops. The lowest depth of measurement is 2.6m. For consistency across data sets, all the soil moisture data sets in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank include a standard format of top 1 m plant available soil moisture. The majority of the observations are from agricultural and grassland sites. The data are consistently reported as plant available soil moisture but ancillary information about field capacity and wilting level is available for some sites.

In addition to the data mentioned above, there is a file with a multiyear average of plant available soil moisture for agricultural fields in the former Soviet Union with winter and spring cereal crops. The western part of this area has an average for 1946-1980 while the eastern part has an average for 1927-1982.

Data are available for free download from the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank Web Site except for the measurements for India which are available on request. Data are provided as ASCII and GrADS files and have accompanying utility codes for reading and manipulating the data. Documentation and references are available on the web pages. The data originators request that you inform them if you download data by sending an e-mail to [[e-mail]]. See Data Citation for how to cite the data.