RUSWET-AGRO

Plant available soil moisture gravimetric observations and maps, 1987-1988

Former Soviet Union

Data for agricultural fields with winter and spring cereal crops

Konstantin Vinnikov
Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland

Alan Robock
Department of Environmental Sciences,
Rutgers University

Vladimir Zabelin
Russian Hydrometeorological Center, Moscow

Mingquan Mu
Scripps Institute of Oceanography,
University of California, San Diego

Iryna Trofimova
Ukrainian Research Institute for Environment and Resources,
Kiev, Ukraine

1. DESCRIPTION OF THE DATA SET

This data set is the output of a system for monitoring of soil moisture at agricultural fields in the former Soviet Union. This system has been run by Dr. Vladimir Zabelin for the last few decades. The data set contains plant available soil moisture for the upper 20 cm and 1 m soil layers at agricultural fields with winter cereal crops and spring cereal crops (given separately) for 102 administrative districts of the former Soviet Union. The measurements of six stations (on the average) were used for each district with equal weights.

The data for the Ukraine have been updated from 1958 through 2002 (To get the updated data, click here).  For more information, see Robock et al. (2004).

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

SPATIAL RESOLUTION: On average, the area of each district is about 30,000 km2 (ranging from 10,000 to more than 100,000 km2).

TEMPORAL DOMAIN: 1987-1988; the growing period, from April 8 to October 28, for each year.

TEMPORAL RESOLUTION: 10-11 days (3 measurements per month).

BASIS: Gravimetric soil moisture observations from about six hundred agrometeorological stations.

The data for 1987-1988 are a small part of the full data set. The full data set of soil moisture in the upper 1 m soil layer during 1958-1996 for Russia and the Ukraine, and during 1958-1991 for others parts of the former Soviet Union (Byelorussia, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Kazakhstan), is being prepared now. Soil moisture data for the upper 20 cm layer were lost for 1958-1975, but are available from 1976. Only the data from Russia and the Ukraine are available from 1991 due to the disintegration of the former Soviet Union.

These data have never before been released to the international scientific community. There are no publications describing these data in the Russian scientific literature. The data set for 1987-1988 has been prepared for use in the ISLSCP Global Soil Wetness Project for validation of model estimated soil moisture variations. A paper describing these data is in preparation.

These data are stored in the files Data8788/dat.*. The * stands for the variables w100, w20, s100, s20, wr, sr, where the character "s" or "w" means that the data represent agricultural fields with "spring" or "winter" cereal crops. The "20" or "100" refer to the depth of the soil layer in cm, and the "r" means that it is the ratio of plant available soil moisture content in the 20 cm and 100 cm layers.

The files Data8788/dat.* for w100, w20, s100 and s20 have the Fortran format (x,i3,2x,f5.2,x,f6.2,x,i3,73f5.1). Each line in these files contains:

the district conventional number [INTEGER (i3)],

the latitude (°N) and longitude (°E) of the center of the district [REAL (f5.2,x,f6.2)],

73 values of plant available soil moisture in cm [REAL (73f5.1]. The first one is for December 28, 1986 the second value is for January 8, 1987, etc., 3 times per month (on the 8th, 18th and 28th of each month); the last value is for December 28, 1988.

The files Data8788/dat.wr and Data8788/dat.sr have the Fortran format (x,i3,2x,f5.2,x,f6.2,x,i3,73f7.3). The variables are the same as above, but with a different format for the data.

The list of the names of the 102 administrative districts of the Former Soviet Union for which we have time series of data, and 45 districts for which we have climatologies (in data set RUSWET-AGROCLIM), their station numbers which are used instead of station names in the GrADS station files, geographical coordinates, and areas are given in the file Data8788/station.list.

2. GrADS FILES

The Fortran program Prog/read8788.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 1987-1988

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 each of the variables w100, w20, s100, and s20 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 0-20 cm, and a map of the ratio of plant available water content (%) in the upper 20 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 1987-1988 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

Robock, Alan, Mingquan Mu, Konstantin Vinnikov, Iryna Trofimova, and Tatyjana Adamenko, 2004:  Forty five Years of observed soil moisture in the Ukraine: No summer desiccation (yet).  Submitted to Geophys. Res. Lett.  PDF file   Supplemental Material (Maps of Winter and Spring Cereal Stations, and Table of 25 Agricultural Districts)

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 8, 2004