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In most cases, the soil water content (SWC) measurement is carried out using commercially available dielectric-permittivity-based probes such as time domain reflectometers or frequency domain reflectometers (FDR). However, these probes use transfer functions which may be inadequate in the soil concerned. Raw SWC measurement in clayey soil shows an important relative error. A simple protocol is presented, allowing for the recovery of an acceptable accuracy of the FDR SWC measurements.

Important topics in land–atmosphere feedback research are water and energy balances and heterogeneities of fluxes at the land surface and in the atmosphere. To target these questions, the Land–Atmosphere Feedback Observatory (LAFO) has been installed in Germany. The instrumentation allows for comprehensive measurements from the bedrock to the troposphere. The LAFO observation strategy aims for simultaneous measurements in all three compartments: atmosphere, soil and land surface, and vegetation.

This project aims to demonstrate the viability of the development of a concept prototype that has, as a differential, free software and hardware used in its development and operation. It thus has unique characteristics compared with commercially available equipment for signal detection, providing strong rejection of spurious electrical noise, typical of urban areas. This project is important academic contribution to open-source instrumental research.

The Sweeping Langmuir Probe on board the PICASSO CubeSat was designed to measure plasma parameters. Before launch, the instrument was tested in a plasma chamber. It is shown that the traditional method to interpret the data cannot be applied directly for this type of probe, and an adaptation is proposed. It is reported how, with a reduced number of data points, the plasma parameters can still be retrieved. Finally, the effects of the contamination of the probe surface are discussed.

Accurate monitoring of water in soil can improve irrigation efficiency, which is important considering climate change and the growing world population. Cosmic-ray neutrons sensors (CRNSs) are a promising tool in irrigation monitoring due to a larger sensed area and to lower maintenance than other ground-based sensors. Here, we analyse the feasibility of irrigation monitoring with CRNSs and the impact of the irrigated field dimensions, of the variations of water in soil, and of instrument design.

Electromagnetic sensors in a drone set-up allow a lot of movability and downscale the cost and risk typically associated with an airborne system. This paper discusses the pros and cons of our newly developed drone-towed sensor system, where we use the controlled-source electromagnetic sensor GEM-2. We conduct six different tests dealing with altitude dependency, temperature drift, transmission frequencies, T and P mode, and drone noise. Additionally, we show a data set collected with the system.

The construction, operation and analysis of a spectral electrical impedance tomography (sEIT) field monitoring setup with high spatial and temporal resolution are presented. Electromagnetic induction errors are corrected, allowing the recovery of images of in-phase conductivity and electrical polarisation of up to 1 kHz.

MDAL is a near real-time, satellite-based surface albedo product based on the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation mission. We propose an update to the processing algorithm that generates MDAL and evaluate the results of these changes through comparison with the pre-update, currently operational MDAL product as well as reference data using different satellite-based albedo products and in situ measurements. We find that the update provides a valuable improvement.

The design, characteristics, and performance of a CubeSat magnetometer board (Quad-Mag) equipped with four PNI RM3100 magnetometers is presented. The inclusion of four sensors allows a potential factor of 2 reduction in the noise floor established for an individual sensor via oversampling with multiple sensors. The Quad-Mag is shown to enable 1 nT magnetic field measurements at 1 Hz and 5.345 nT at 65 Hz using commercial off-the-shelf sensors for space applications.