Quality control of station-based soil moisture observations in Turkey

Soil moisture is an important variable in many hydrological applications, particularly in water and energy balance-, climate-, weather prediction-, and drought-focused studies. Soil moisture can be estimated from different platforms, like in-situ stations, satellite (active, passive sensors) as well as hydrological models. Among them, station-based observations are widely used for both validation and calibration studies of satellite- and hydrological-model based products. Therefore, evaluation of the consistency of station-based soil moisture measurements is critical. In this study, soil moisture observations obtained at 149 stations over Turkey since 2007 are analyzed for the first time. Initially soil moisture values are corrected for soil temperature. Then, quality control of the soil moisture values is performed using precipitation data to determine consistency of time series.