TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schrön, Martin
A1  - Oswald, Sascha
A1  - Zacharias, Steffen
A1  - Kasner, Mandy
A1  - Dietrich, Peter
A1  - Attinger, Sabine
T1  - Neutrons on rails
BT  - Transregional monitoring of soil moisture and snow water equivalent
JF  - Geophysical research letters : GRL / American Geophysical Union
N2  - Large-scale measurements of the spatial distribution of water content in soils and snow are challenging for state-of-the-art hydrogeophysical methods. Cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) is a noninvasive technology that has the potential to bridge the scale gap between conventional in situ sensors and remote sensing products in both, horizontal and vertical domains. In this study, we explore the feasibility and potential of estimating water content in soils and snow with neutron detectors in moving trains. Theoretical considerations quantify the stochastic measurement uncertainty as a function of water content, altitude, resolution, and detector efficiency. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the sensitivity of measured water content is almost unperturbed by train materials. Finally, three distinct real-world experiments provide a proof of concept on short and long-range tracks. With our results a transregional observational soil moisture product becomes a realistic vision within the next years.
KW  - soil moisture
KW  - transregional
KW  - multiscale
KW  - snow water equivalent
KW  - cosmic-ray neutron sensing
KW  - railway
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093924
SN  - 0094-8276
SN  - 1944-8007
VL  - 48
IS  - 24
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken, NJ
ER  -