Own the Data, Understand the Land: Citizens as Key Players in Soil Moisture Monitoring?

Climate change is increasing both the duration of dry periods and the intensity of precipitation events, yet dense, long-term soil moisture records - particularly in rural areas - remain scarce. These records are necessary to understand regional water balances, validate remote sensing data and hydrological models, and provide information for drought-resistant land management. Wassermeisterei is a citizen-led soil moisture monitoring network in the Fläming region around Potsdam and Berlin, Germany. It provides residents with low-cost sensors to continuously measure soil moisture at four depths in the topsoil and subsoil across a growing network of over 70 sites. Participants receive structured education (courses, hands-on-workshops, and online materials) and are supported to install and maintain sensors in their communities (e.g., agricultural land, grassland, gardens, forests). A real-time LoRaWAN network feeds monitored data into a collaboratively developed, interactive public water map, making soil moisture data accessible and actionable for local communities and stakeholders. Through community building, shared data analysis, and practical resources for replication, the bottom-up citizen science project promotes local responsibility, closes observation gaps in a cost-effective manner, and potentially creates a replicable model for other soils and land use contexts. This presentation examines the integration of citizen science data into formal databases and assesses the scientific value of data from the soil moisture network. Furthermore, the possibility of using this information to improve regional climate resilience by providing data on the water balance of different land use types is explored.