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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik

UP 7: Measurement Techniques

UP 7.5: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 19. März 2020, 11:50–12:10, HSZ 105

Scaling up CRNS - non-invasive soil moisture measurement at the hectometer scale — •Markus Köhli^1,2, Jannis Weimar¹, Martin Schrön³, and Ulrich Schmidt¹ — ¹Physikalisches Institut, Heidelberg University, Germany — ²Physikalisches Institut, University of Bonn, Germany — ³Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung, UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

A novel method called Cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) is challenging soil moisture measurements by its non-invasive application at a hectometer scaled footprint. Using this technique one can relate the flux density of albedo neutrons generated in cosmic-ray induced air showers to the amount of water in a radius of several hundred meters. The key principle here is that neutrons show an exceptionally different behavior interacting with hydrogen. It slows down fast neutrons, whereas any other heavier element rather reflects them. In the recent years the understanding of neutron transport by Monte Carlo simulations led to major advancements in precision, which have been successfully been tested in a manifold of experiments. A recent successfull application is the determination of the snow water equivalent in the Alps. In order to scale up the method and to reduce costs we recently have developed large-scale neutron detectors including readout electronics and data acquistion systems based on Arduino microcontrollers. These boron-lined detectors shall offer an alternative platform to current Helium-3 based systems. The final implementation of our design allowed also to build the largest up to now existing CRNS detector for the UFZ Leipzig.