To support remote sensing, land hydrological modeling, and surface process studies, a multi-scale soil moisture and temperature monitoring network was established on the central Tibetan Plateau by ITP Prof. YANG Kun and his group since 2010. In this effort, they designed and set up a network for monitoring soil humidity and temperature in Nagqu, central Tibet. The network consists of 56 stations with their altitudes varying from 4470 m to ~4950 m. To support the calibration and validation using Remote sensing and modeling in the hydro-meteorology, each station is carefully designed to monitor soil humidity and temperature at three spatial scales (1.0, 0.3, 0.1 degree) and four soil depths (0~5, 10, 20, and 40 cm). Additionally, scientists paid special attention to the continuity and high-quality of the data, therefore devoted tremendous efforts to protecting the data logger from soil water intrusion, to calibrating soil moisture sensors, and to upscaling the point measurements.

The experimental area is chosen as it is characterized by low biomass, high soil moisture dynamic range, and typical freeze-thaw cycle. As auxiliary parameters of this network, soil texture and soil organic carbon content are measured at each station to support further studies.

Such a network on the Third Pole champions the highest soil moisture network above sea level in the world. It meets the requirement for evaluating a variety of soil moisture products and for soil moisture scaling analyses. It also directly contributes to the soil-water-ice-air-ecosystem interaction studies on the Third Pole.

Their effort was recently acknowledged in the top-notch journal such as Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00203.1?af=R). After publication, Prof. Yang intended to publicize the data of the paper via the International Soil Moisture Network and the recent two-year data, which will become accessible soon.