TY  - CONF
AU  - Belleflamme, Alexandre
AU  - Hammoudeh, Suad
AU  - Görgen, Klaus
AU  - Nieberding, Felix
AU  - Bogena, Heye
AU  - Ney, Patrizia
AU  - Kollet, Stefan
TI  - Evaluation of predicted soil moisture with the hydrological model ParFlow/CLM against CRNS and SoilNet sensors in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany
M1  - FZJ-2025-03986
PY  - 2025
AB  - Recent years, alternating between droughts and extreme precipitation events, have highlighted the need for both, improved monitoring and accurate predictions of the terrestrial water cycle. In particular, the impacts of dry and wet extremes on subsurface water resources (e.g., soil moisture, groundwater) are crucial to assess the impacts of water scarcity and excess on ecosystem dynamics as well as to provide stakeholders in agriculture, forestry, the water sector, and other fields with information supporting the sustainable use of these resources.In this context, the ADAPTER (ADAPt TERrestrial Systems) project, which dealt with the development and provisioning of innovative simulation-based data and information products, initiated the installation of 13 hydrometeorological monitoring stations, 12 of which are located on or at the margins of agricultural fields, and one on grassland. In addition to a meteorological station measuring the usual meteorological parameters (air temperature and humidity, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, solar radiation, and precipitation), we installed SoilNet sensors that measure soil moisture and temperature at four depths (5, 15, 30, and 60cm, with two sensors per depth), and a Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensor (CRNS) to measure soil moisture at the field scale.The continuous automated measurements are accompanied by a free-running monitoring and forecasting system using the integrated hydrological model ParFlow/CLM to predict the terrestrial water cycle over hydrologic Germany. In this setup, ParFlow/CLM simulates the 2D surface and 3D variably saturated subsurface water states and fluxes at high spatial resolution (0.6km) down to 60m depth with weather forecasts from ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) as atmospheric forcing. These simulations have already been evaluated on a monthly basis with satellite-based soil moisture and evapotranspiration, and in-situ observations for groundwater table depth and streamflow discharge (doi: 10.3389/frwa.2023.1183642). However, their accuracy has never been assessed in a comparison with in-situ soil moisture measurements and on a daily basis at a very local, stakeholder-relevant scale.During the observation period several extreme hydrometeorological events happened, e.g., the extreme precipitation event in mid-July 2021, the drought in summer 2022, the flash drought in June 2023, the exceptionally rainy year 2024, and the dry winter and spring 2025. Here we evaluate the ability of our ParFlow/CLM simulations to reproduce soil moisture measured at our stations, both at point scale at different depths with the SoilNet sensors and integrated over a larger area (radius of ~200m) and around 20cm depth with the CRNS.The results show that uncalibrated ParFlow/CLM is able to reproduce the evolution and temporal dynamics of the soil moisture over time. The model’s accuracy to reproduce the drying and rewetting of the soil depends, amongst others, on the soil texture and vegetation properties, which are represented in a simplified manner in the simulation setup.
T2  - 3rd OZCAR-TERENO Conference
CY  - 29 Sep 2025 - 2 Oct 2025, Paris (France)
Y2  - 29 Sep 2025 - 2 Oct 2025
M2  - Paris, France
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)24
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1046905
ER  -