Swiss Soil Moisture EXperiment (SwissSMEX)

Soil moisture is a key variable of the climate system, which is not only relevant for agriculture but also for meteorological and seasonal forecasting. In particular, knowledge on soil moisture evolution and its interaction with the atmosphere can help understand processes leading to extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves, and heavy precipitation. This is particularly relevant in the context of climate change, with changes in soil moisture being projected to enhance (and in some case reduce) impacts from enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations. Despite its importance, soil moisture is not routinely measured in most parts of the world, particularly in Europe, where measurement datasets are scarce.

Since June 2008, the joint project SwissSMEX (Swiss Soil Moisture EXperiment) has been initiated by ETH Zurich, Agroscope ART, and MeteoSwiss to address this issue. In 2010 the additional project SwissSMEX-Veg was established, in order to investigate soil moisture evolution at sites with different land cover types (forest vs grassland). Both projects were funded by the external page Swiss National Foundation. This allowed the establishment of a three-year (2008-2011) soil moisture measurement experiment to provide a comprehensive assessment of soil moisture and its interaction with climate in Switzerland. At present, measurements are still on-going, and the network consists of 19 sites at 17 locations (14 grassland, 1 arable, and 4 forest stations), including the Rietholzbach research catchment site, several external page SwissFluxnet sites, and selected external page SwissMetNet stations.

Current status