RUSWET-GRASS-130STA

Plant available soil moisture gravimetric observations and maps, 1978-1985

Former Soviet Union

Data for natural vegetation (grass)

Konstantin Vinnikov
Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland

Alan Robock
Department of Environmental Sciences,
Rutgers University

Nina A. Speranskaya
State Hydrological Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia

Irina B. Yeserkepova
Kazakh Research Hydrometeorological Institute, Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan

February 13, 1997

1. DESCRIPTION OF THE DATA SET

This data set contains 1978-85 results of soil moisture gravimetric measurement at 130 meteorological stations of the former Soviet Union. The data set contains plant available soil moisture for the upper 10 cm and 1 m soil layers at flat observational plots with natural grass type vegetation. The size of the observational plots is about 0.1 ha. Observations are made with temporal resolution about 10 days during the warm season, and once a month during winter. Four points in each plot are used for each measurement and the results averaged.

The data for 1978-1985 are a small part of the data which are published in annual reference books.

SPATIAL DOMAIN: The former Soviet Union (Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Kazakhstan).

TEMPORAL DOMAIN: 1978-1985.

TEMPORAL RESOLUTION: 10-11 days (3 measurements per month) during the growing season and 30 days (1 measurement per month) when the soil is frozen.

BASIS: Gravimetric soil moisture observations from 130 energy balance stations.

These data are stored in the files Data/soil.*. The * stands for the variables 100 or 10, where the number refers to the depth in cm of the soil layer. The files have the Fortran format (x,i5,2(x,f6.2),x,i4,36f5.1). Each line in these files contains:

the WMO station index [INTEGER (i5)],

the latitude (°N) and longitude (°E) of the station [REAL 2(x,f6.2)],

the year number [INTEGER (i4)],

36 values of plant available soil moisture in cm [REAL (36f5.1)] The first one is for January 8, the second value is for January 18, etc, 3 times per month (on the 8th, 18th and 28th of each month); the last value is for December 28.

The file Data/soil.r10 contains the ratio of soil moisture in the top 10 cm of soil to soil moisture in the entire top 1 m. It has the Fortran format (x,i5,2(x,f6.2),x,i4,36f7.3). The variables are the same as above, but with a different format for the data.

The list of names of the stations, their indexes which are used instead of station names in the GrADS station files, and geographical coordinates are given in the file Prog/station.list. More information about 50 of these stations can be found in (Vinnikov and Yeserkepova, 1991).

2. GrADS FILES

The Fortran program Prog/writegrads.f is designed for reading the initial data and for writing them as GrADS station files Grads/st.*. The GrADS station data descriptor files have names Grads/st.*.ctl. Station map files are Grads/sta.map.* .

The GrADS station data function OACRES with default parameters was used to interpolate the initial data into a 1x1° grid, using the GrADS exec Grads/run.write. The results of interpolation were written as the GrADS gridded files Grads/grd.*. Their GrADS descriptors are in Grads/grd.*.ctl.

3. SOIL MOISTURE MAPS 1978-85

Maps of plant available soil moisture for the territory of the Former Soviet Union can be displayed using GrADS using the three execs: Grads/mp, Grads/mpc, Grads/mpc3.

The 'mp' exec displays in landscape mode both a contour map of soil moisture for each of variables and the district data. At the end of each exec, GrADS commands for drawing such maps for each date of observation for the variables n100 and n10 are attached as comments.

The 'mpc' exec displays in landscape mode a color shaded map of soil moisture for the same variables. At the end of the exec, the GrADS commands for drawing such maps for each date of observation for each of the variables are attached as comments.

The 'mpc3' exec displays in portrait mode on one page three color shaded maps of plant available water content in the soil layers 0-100 cm and 0-10 cm, and a map of the ratio of plant available water content (%) in the upper 10 cm and 100 cm soil layers. At the end of the exec, the GrADS commands for drawing such maps for each date of observation during 1978-1985 are attached as comments.

You can use these GrADS files to write your own routines to display and analyze the data in many different ways.

Acknowledgments. This work has been supported by NASA grant NCC555 and NOAA grant NA56GPO212.

References

General description of Russian gravimetric soil moisture data in English:

Entin, Jared, Alan Robock, Konstantin Y. Vinnikov, Shuang Qiu, Vladimir Zabelin, Suxia Liu, A. Namkhai, and Ts. Adyasuren, 1999: Evaluation of Global Soil Wetness Project soil moisture simulations. J. Meteorol. Soc. Japan, 77, 183-198. (Invited paper) ABSTRACT

Robock, A., K. Y. Vinnikov, C. A. Schlosser, N. A. Speranskaya, and Y. Xue, 1995: Use of midlatitude soil moisture and meteorological observations to validate soil moisture simulations with biosphere and bucket models. J. Climate, 8, 15-35. ABSTRACT

Vinnikov, K. Y. and I. B. Yeserkepova, 1991. Soil moisture: empirical data and model results. J. Climate, 4, 66-79.

Vinnikov, K. Y. , A. Robock, N. A. Speranskaya, and C. A. Schlosser, 1996: Scales of temporal and spatial variability of midlatitude soil moisture. J. Geophys. Res., 101, 7163-7174. ABSTRACT , PDF file

Recommended Russian publications and reference books:

Kelchevskaya, L. S., 1983: Soil moisture of the European part of USSR. Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad, 183 pp. (In Russian).

Kelchevskaya, L. S., Ed., 1989: Mean long term stores of productive water under winter and early spring cereals in districts, regions, republics and economic regions. Reference book. Vol. 2. Urals, Western and Eastern Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia. Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad, 65 pp. (in Russian).

Meshcherskaya, A. V., N. A. Boldyreva, and N. D. Shapaeva, 1982: District average plant available soil water storage and the depth of snow cover. Statistical analysis and its usage (some examples). Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad, 243 pp. (In Russian).

Zhukov, V. A., Ed., 1986: Mean long term stores of productive water under winter and early spring cereals in districts, regions, republics and economic regions. Reference book. Vol. 1. European part of the USSR. Gidrometeoizdat, Leningrad, 122 pp. (in Russian).

For further information, please contact:

Dr. Konstantin Ya. Vinnikov OR Prof. Alan Robock
Department of Meteorology Department of Environmental Sciences
University of Maryland Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
College Park, Maryland 20742 USA New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901 USA
Phone: (301) 405-5382 Phone: (732) 932-9478
Fax: (301) 314-9482Fax: (732) 932-8644
E-mail: kostya@atmos.umd.edu E-mail: robock@envsci.rutgers.edu

TO DOWNLOAD THE DATA,
get the complete contents of each of the directories and subdirectories, click here.



Prepared by Alan Robock (robock@envsci.rutgers.edu)
Last updated on August 6, 2004