Long-term soil moisture measurements and upscaled plot-level averages from a temperate deciduous forest in Germany (Hohes Holz, DE-HoH, 2014–2024)

This dataset provides a decade-long record (2014–2024) of soil moisture data from the temperate deciduous forest site Hohes Holz (DE-HoH) in Central Germany. For detailed usage instructions, please refer to the associated data paper. The data are organized into four complementary files: Raw data – Includes raw in-situ sensor measurements from all soil moisture profiles, with each CSV corresponding to a single profile. For each sensor, an additional column indicates the quality control status using a five-digit string (9XXXXX). Each digit (X) corresponds to a quality check, where 0 = no issue, 1 = minor issue, and 2 = critical issue. The checks are applied in the following order: flagMaintenance() – Maintenance flag flagManual() – Manual edit flag flagMissing() – Missing data flag flagRange(min=5, max=60) – Out-of-range values (5%–50% moisture) flagOffset(thresh=1, tolerance=0.3, window="6h") – Sensor offset exceeds threshold/tolerance Sensor-level data – Quality-controlled daily median records from individual sensors, including depth, volumetric soil water content, geographic coordinates (UTM 32N WGS 84, EPSG:32632), and upscaled values for each profile. Averaged data – Plot-level daily averages per depth, including spatial means and upscaled medians, along with metadata on the number of active sensors and the minimum required number of sensors (MRNS) used to ensure spatial representativeness. CRNS data – Soil moisture estimates from Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensing (CRNS), obtained within the COSMOS project. For methodological details, please refer to the associated data publication: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/1125/2022/. The measurements were processed assuming soil bulk density of 1.136 g cm³, soil organic carbon of 0.031 g/g, soil lattice water of 0.038 g/g, and a free calibration parameter of N0 = 743 cph.