Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik

UP 7: Methoden - Messverfahren und Datenauswertung

UP 7.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 12:00–12:15, MAG 100

Probing soil moisture by cosmic ray induced neutron showers — •Markus Köhli and Ulrich Schmidt — Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

The measurement of soil moisture at scales which average over local geological and biological structures is a major challenge in characterizing the land surface. It especially becomes important as refined numerical models in meteorology make use of mesh sizes of one kilometer or less. Fast cosmic ray induced neutrons are considered to be a probe for the determination of soil moisture on such medium scales. It is a the characteristic feature of hydrogen to slow down neutrons very efficiently during the scattering process. This leads to the spectrum of reflected neutrons being dependent on the water content.
In this talk Monte Carlo based simulations are presented to study the soil footprint measured by neutron detection systems. Therefore the influence of a number of features on neutron flux will be discussed and quantitatively described.