Geographic Modeling of Soil Moisture: Applying the Newhall Simulation Model to Broad Regions Using the Parameter-Elevation Regressions On Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) Data Set.

In this project, we used the Parameter-elevation-Regressions-on-Independent-Slopes-Model (PRISM) dataset as input into an automated Java program Newhall Simulation Model (NSM) in order to model soil moisture and temperature in major land resource are (MLRA) 147 and 140 covering portions of Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and West Virginia. We compared predictions from the model with default values for available water-holding capacity of 200 mm to predictions using values extracted from SSURGO polygons for the MLRAS in order to test the sensitivity of model output. Output from both approaches was compared to output predicted at instrumented weather stations. Results suggest that moisture modeling using NSM may lead to greater accuracy in prediction of soil climate than SSURGO alone.