Soil property database: Southern Great Plains 1997 Hydrology Experiment

Abstract

[1] Many models used in land surface hydrology, vadose zone hydrology, and hydroclimatology require an accurate representation of soil properties. Unfortunately, existing soil property databases are limited in terms of reliability, precision, and their usefulness in evolving soil-vegetation-atmosphere-transfer (SVAT) schemes of general circulation models (GCMs) or regional-scale hydrologic models. Furthermore, not many site-specific, comprehensive soil property measurement campaigns have been carried out concurrently with large-scale remote sensing hydrologic campaigns. To better understand the complex and interdependent geophysical processes in the near surface, we conducted an extensive soil property measurement campaign during the Southern Great Plains 1997 (SGP97) Hydrology Experiment. We measured soil physical, hydraulic, and thermal properties across the SGP97 study region. The resulting soil property database not only is useful for evaluating the SVAT schemes in GCMs and other hydrologic models but also can be used as a basis for transfer function modeling, extrapolating point estimates of soil properties to larger spatial scales, testing point and nonpoint source pollution modeling, and evaluating evolving hypotheses in water and energy transfer across the land-atmosphere boundary. The complete data report [Shouse et al., 2002] and raw data are available upon request from the George E. Brown Salinity Laboratory. Summarized data are given by Mohanty et al. [1999].