China Soil Moisture Data in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank

The China Soil Moisture Data consists of 43 stations in China, for the
period 1981-1991 (Entin, et al. 1999). Soil moisture observations were
taken using a gravimetric technique for each 10 cm layer of soil down
to a depth of 1 m, with the first layer divided into two 5-cm
layers. Vegetation in this network was mostly agriculture or
grassland.

Data were originally recorded as percent wetness and then converted to
volumetric soil moisture using soil density information available for
each layer at each site. The wilting level of each layer was also
measured and converted to a volumetric measure. The Plant-Available
Soil Moisture (PASM) was determined for each layer by subtracting the
wilting level volumetric measure from the soil moisture observations.

The China soil moisture data is part of the Global Soil Moisture Data
Bank and is freely available via ftp from:

"ftp://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pub/soil_moisture/CHINA/Data/"

or ftp climate.envsci.rutgers.edu
login as: anonymous
Password: your email address
cd pub/soil_moisture/CHINA/Data/

Data is available in ASCII or GrADS format.