Neptoon¶
neptoon is a Python tool for processing Cosmic-Ray Neutron Sensors (CRNS). CRNS estimate soil moisture at the field scale, and up to root-zone depths, by tracking changes in the number of fast neutrons found at a particular location. This is primarily due to the strong inverse relationship between the number of hydrogen atoms and the number of fast neutrons. To have estimates of only the impact of hydrogen in soil moisture, additional processing and correction steps are required. Our understanding of the sensor continues to grow and change, which brings about an increasing number of theories and equations that can be applied.
Neptoon provides workflows for standard CRNS correction and soil-moisture estimation, while still exposing lower-level interfaces for researchers who need to test alternative processing choices.
Active development
Neptoon is still pre-1.0. Configuration schemas may change before the 1.0 stability release; pin the package version for reproducible processing.
Start here¶
Install¶
Introduction¶
How does Cosmic-Ray Neutron Sensing work?
An overview on how the CRNS technology works, and the steps required to go from neutrons to soil moisture
Key neptoon features
An explanation of what neptoon can do (with links to more details)
User Guides¶
Workflow overview
Understand a little more about the workflow - from neutrons to soil moisture
Sparse soil-profile reconstruction
Combine standard texture-class priors and sparse In-Situ Probe observations to reconstruct a vertical soil-moisture profile with uncertainty for CRNS interpretation, with worked examples, separated error components, internal-model documentation, and validation guidance.
Graphical User Interface
Use the GUI to run configuration-based processing.
Configuration Files
How to prepare and use configuration files for fast (and reproducible!) processing.
Using neptoon in your Python IDE
Use neptoon from a Python editor or notebook.
Calibration
Need to calibrate your site? Check this out.
Examples
Run example datasets and configuration files.
More information¶
History of CRNS
Follow the neutron-physics, hydrometry, cosmic-ray, spectrometry and planetary lineages that converged into modern field-scale CRNS.
Scientific literature
Trace Neptoon methods to the primary and supporting scientific references used in the documentation and software.
Roadmap
Planned development work.
Support¶
Contributing¶
Contributions are welcome. The project aims to support reproducible CRNS processing while remaining adaptable to different field setups.
Authors and acknowledgments¶
Lead developers:
We would also like to acknowledge the following people for continued support during the development of neptoon:
- Fredo Erxleben — ORCID
- Steffen Zacharias — ORCID
- Rafael Rosolem — ORCID · Homepage
- Miguel Rico-Ramirez — ORCID
- Till Francke — ORCID
- Daniel Rasche — ORCID
The development of neptoon was supported by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme - ENVironment Research infrastructures INNOVation Roadmap- (ENVRINNOV project, grant no. 101131426)