Assessing the feasibility of a directional cosmic-ray neutron sensing sensor  for estimating soil moisture

Francke, Till; Heistermann, Maik; Köhli, Markus; Budach, Christian; Schrön, Martin; Oswald, Sascha E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-11-75-2022

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-11-75-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-11-75-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

Research article

|

16 Feb 2022

Research article |

| 16 Feb 2022

Assessing the feasibility of a directional cosmic-ray neutron sensing sensor for estimating soil moisture

Till Francke, Maik Heistermann, Markus Köhli, Christian Budach, Martin Schrön, and Sascha E. Oswald

Model code and software

directional_CRNS: Discernability and accuracy of CRNS signal from a directional CRNS probe Till Francke https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5881474

URANOS – The Ultra Rapid Adaptable Neutron-Only Simulation for Environmental Research Köhli, M., Schrön, M., Zacharias, S., Dietrich, P., and Schmidt, U. https://www.ufz.de/uranos

Short summary

Cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) is a non-invasive tool for measuring hydrogen pools like soil moisture, snow, or vegetation. This study presents a directional shielding approach, aiming to measure in specific directions only. The results show that non-directional neutron transport blurs the signal of the targeted direction. For typical instruments, this does not allow acceptable precision at a daily time resolution. However, the mere statistical distinction of two rates is feasible.