PRISM

oznet Network  

Each site of the monitoring network (Smith et al., 2012) measures the soil moisture at 0-5 cm, 0-30 cm, 30-60 cm and 60-90 cm with water content reflectometers (Campbell Scientific). The 10 OzNet soil moisture monitoring sites in the Yanco area are all ‘new’ sites installed throughout late 2003 and early 2004, located on a grid-based pattern within the 60 km × 60 km area allowing for measurement of the sub-grid variability of remote sensed observations such as near-surface soil moisture from AMSR-2, SMOS, and SMAP. All of these sites fall within the area covered by the broader PRISM area. These sites are divided between the 3 main land uses in the region— irrigated cropping (including the major rice growing region of the Coleambally Irrigation Area), dryland cropping (typically wheat and fallow), and grazing (typically perennial grass type vegetation).

SMAPEX Network

The 24 additional soil moisture sites were installed in late 2009 to support the Soil Moisture Active Passive Experiment (SMAPEx) project. These continuously monitor soil moisture at 0-5 cm with a Hydraprobe and soil temperature at 1, 2.5 and 5 cm depths (Unidata® 6507A/10 Sensors). The sites were installed to monitor as much of the variety of land cover conditions in the area as possible. The network is equally distributed between irrigated cropping land (occupying approximately 1/3 of the PRISM study area) and grazing dry land.