The Potsdam Soil Moisture Observatory: High-coverage reference observations at kilometer scale

The dataset comprises 16 stationary cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) sensors, partly co-located with permanent soil water content sensors, complemented by remote sensing–based soil moisture estimates, lidar, and airborne hyperspectral observations. It further includes two groundwater observation wells, meteorological records, and data from intensive manual sampling campaigns covering soil water content, bulk density, organic matter, soil texture, and hydraulic parameters. Additional components are snow parameters (depth, density, areal cover), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), stable water isotope samples, and neutron spectrometer measurements. Owing to the high density and overlapping footprints of the CRNS sensors across ~1 km², the dataset enables geostatistical interpolation, resulting in spatially and temporally continuous soil moisture estimates.