Soil Moisture#

soil_moisture loads soil-moisture fields or time series. It is used as land-surface forcing context and as a hydrological diagnostic, read alongside recharge and the other climatic forcings rather than on its own.

Accepted sources#

Source

Use when

Source page

custom

A local soil-moisture file or station series is authoritative.

custom

sim2

SIM2 soil-moisture (soil wetness index) should be retrieved over the project period.

sim2

Minimal example#

[data]
types = ["soil_moisture"]

[[data.soil_moisture.sources]]
source = "sim2"
extent = "watershed"

See [data] DataManagersConfig for every field of data.soil_moisture and data.soil_moisture.sources, including types and defaults.

Loaded shape#

For source = "custom", path decides the shape: a directory of station files loads a list of point time series, one per station, while a single .nc or .tif file loads a spatial field instead. For source = "sim2", the loader always returns the full spatial grid as a field, fetching the SIM2 soil wetness index parameter.

Either way, values are normalized to the internal unit %. Downstream code treats soil_moisture like any other climatic variable: a homogeneous series is extracted (station average, or spatial mean of a field), converted to solver units, and aligned to the simulation stress periods before use, as described in Hydrological Forcing Chain.

Soil Moisture Source: custom#

Use source = "custom" for local soil-moisture fields or station series.

[[data.soil_moisture.sources]]
source = "custom"
path = "data/soil_moisture/soil_moisture.nc"

Check whether values are fractions, percentages, or volumetric water content before using them. Set source_unit when the file metadata do not make the convention explicit.

Soil Moisture Source: sim2#

Use source = "sim2" to retrieve SIM2 soil-moisture fields.

[[data.soil_moisture.sources]]
source = "sim2"
extent = "watershed"

The overview climatic summary panel plots precipitation and ETP only, so soil moisture has no dedicated figure. Check period coverage, the unit convention, and whether the data are used as a diagnostic or as a preprocessing input. The configured project period should match the intended hydrological or simulation window; see date_start and date_end.

Downstream uses#

  • hydrological diagnostics, read alongside recharge and other climatic forcing;

  • land-surface forcing context handled by the generic forcing bridge, see Hydrological Forcing Chain;

  • climatic summaries produced by the data-retrieval workflow, see Retrieval Workflow.