The Potential of Fragipans in Sustaining Pearl Millet during Drought Periods in North-Cent

Seven CSV files contain daily rainfall and minute-level soil temperature and moisture measurements from two soil types in north-central Namibia over a four-month period. The dataset was collected by Brice Prudat of the University of Basel to analyze the hydrological role of fragipans in sustaining pearl millet during droughts. It includes R scripts for calculating relative available soil water and maximum soil surface temperature, supporting the findings of the 2021 paper by Prudat et al.

Use Cases

• Compare plant-available water between sandy soils with and without fragipans based on daily aggregated soil moisture data.
• Model the relationship between daily rainfall and soil moisture retention using the provided rainfall and RASW (Relative Available Soil Water) datasets.
• Analyze high-resolution soil temperature fluctuations using the per-minute measurement files from the two study locations.
• Reproduce hydrological analysis and figures from the associated research paper using the included R code scripts.

Strengths

• Includes high-frequency, per-minute soil moisture and temperature measurements, allowing for detailed temporal analysis.
• Data spans a four-month observational period, capturing seasonal or event-driven hydrological changes.
• Provides directly comparable data from two distinct soil profiles (Ehenge and Omutunda) under the same climatic conditions.
• Dataset is accompanied by the original R code used for analysis and figure generation, enhancing reproducibility.

Limitations

• Row count and total file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred from file descriptions or the accompanying PDF.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

University of Basel

Collection Method

Field measurements of soil moisture content and temperature, and recorded rainfall.

Time Range

Four-month period (specific dates not provided in input).

Geography

North-central Namibia