Soil Moisture Data: Peck (FIFE)

Water content measurements by gravimetric methods involve weighing a wet sample, removing the water via drying in an oven, and reweighing the sample to determine the amount of water removed. Water content then is obtained by dividing the difference between wet and dry masses by the mass of the dry sample to obtain the ratio of the mass of water to the mass of dry soil. When multiplied by 100, this becomes the percentage of water in the sample on a dry-mass (or, as often expressed, on a dry-weight) basis. Soil moisture determined using the gravimetric method was measured at 800 sites along 24 transects. These transects were over flown by the airborne Gamma Radiation System used to measure soil moisture. These data are useful for comparison of airborne and ground soil moisture data. This analysis for the airborne Gamma Radiation System, using completely independent soil moisture data showed that the root mean square error of 97 flights was 3.02 percent soil moisture, with a bias of less than 0.5 percent soil moisture (Carroll et al., 1988).

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated March 23, 2026, 22:16 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 19:07 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 10d09d53-5e54-4605-87c9-7c9a508609c6
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/109
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-03-16T22:16:02Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher ORNL_DAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 1df786cb4f0b7754edfa27fc85b4a78e33556314ce54bf575951e6397448835d
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial [[{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-96.62,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":39.12,"EastBoundingCoordinate":-96.48,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":38.97}],"CARTESIAN"]
temporal 1987-06-02/1989-08-09
theme {"Earth Science"}