AUTHOR=Köhli Markus , Weimar Jannis , Schrön Martin , Baatz Roland , Schmidt Ulrich TITLE=Soil Moisture and Air Humidity Dependence of the Above-Ground Cosmic-Ray Neutron Intensity JOURNAL=Frontiers in Water VOLUME=2 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/water/articles/10.3389/frwa.2020.544847 DOI=10.3389/frwa.2020.544847 ISSN=2624-9375 ABSTRACT=

Investigations of neutron transport through air and soil by Monte Carlo simulations led to major advancements toward a precise interpretation of measurements; they particularly improved the understanding of the cosmic-ray neutron footprint. Up to now, the conversion of soil moisture to a detectable neutron count rate has relied mainly on the equation presented by Desilets and Zreda in 2010. While in general a hyperbolic expression can be derived from theoretical considerations, their empiric parameterization needs to be revised for two reasons. Firstly, a rigorous mathematical treatment reveals that the values of the four parameters are ambiguous because their values are not independent. We found a three-parameter equation with unambiguous values of the parameters that is equivalent in any other respect to the four-parameter equation. Secondly, high-resolution Monte-Carlo simulations revealed a systematic deviation of the count rate to soil moisture relation especially for extremely dry conditions as well as very humid conditions. That is a hint that a smaller contribution to the intensity was forgotten or not adequately treated by the conventional approach. Investigating the above-ground neutron flux through a broadly based Monte-Carlo simulation campaign revealed a more detailed understanding of different contributions to this signal, especially targeting air humidity corrections. The packages MCNP and URANOS were used to derive a function able to describe the respective dependencies, including the effect of different hydrogen pools and the detector-specific response function. The new relationship has been tested at two exemplary measurement sites, and its remarkable performance allows for a promising prospect of more comprehensive data quality in the future.