Russian Agricultural Soil Moisture from 600 Stations in the Former Soviet Union

Approximately 600 agrimeteorological stations across the grain belt of the former Soviet Union contributed gravimetric soil moisture measurements. Data are available from the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank in ASCII and GrADS formats. The dataset was last updated in 1988.

Use Cases

• Analyze historical agricultural drought patterns based on gravimetric soil moisture measurements.
• Model historical soil moisture trends across the former Soviet grain belt based on station data.
• Validate modern remote sensing soil moisture products using historical ground-truth data.
• Study the spatial distribution of soil moisture across 102 administrative districts.

Strengths

• Covers about 600 agrimeteorological stations, providing a broad spatial sample.
• Includes data from 102 administrative districts across eight former Soviet republics.
• Provides gravimetric soil moisture, a direct and fundamental measurement.

Limitations

• Last updated 1988-12-31 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Global Soil Moisture Data Bank, hosted at Rutgers University.

Collection Method

Likely contains ground-based gravimetric measurements collected at agrimeteorological stations.

Freshness

1988-12-31 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Grain belt of the former Soviet Union, including Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Kazakhstan.