Research data of the manuscript by Matan et al.

Soil represents an important storage of water, being an essential resource for plants in natural environments and agricultural landscapes. Additionally, soils are efficient filters that enable a certain percentage of precipitation to reach groundwater, providing an important hydrological resource to locations where surface water is not available. In this paper, soil water content (SWC) was monitored during two years to characterize the hydrological dynamics and quantify water resources. The studied soil is developed over a carbonate bedrock in the Mediterranean region of Croatia. The site has a classical red Mediterranean soil with high clay content and a calcic horizon composed of diffuse and nodule pedogenic carbonates. The hydrological monitoring along the soil profile was conducted using sensors based on frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) technology. However, soil characteristics resulted in factors other than SWC affecting the recorded signal. The measured SWC signals record short-term variability in response to precipitation events, although their absolute values and their long-term variability are unreliable. To improve the knowledge of the SWC dynamics at this site, a 1D hydrological model was implemented. Basic corrections were conducted to raw SWC signals to use measured data to calibrate the model. In average, the simulation explains 72% of the corrected SWC variability and properly reproduces the short-term variability measured by sensors, improving the original and corrected SWC signals. This research shows that even if FDR sensors provide unreliable data in problematic soils, the measured signals can still be used to calibrate hydrological models and to produce realistic simulated data.