The research is carried out over the experimental basin Fiumarella of Corleto (Basilicata, South-Italy, see Fig. 1.), where numerous rainfall and flood events under wet and dry antecedent conditions were recorded and examined. The monitored basin has an area of 32 Km2 highly heterogeneous in soil texture and land use. In order to extend the analysis to a smaller basin we monitored also a subcatchment located on the righthand side of the Fiumarella of Corleto (Fig. 1) with an area of about 0.65 Km2 and characterized by a significant homogeneity in land use and vegetation cover (further details can be found on Carriero et al. (2006) and Onorati et al. (2007)).
The monitoring station of the small subcatchment is realized with a metallic tank with a Thomson weir for accurate discharge measurements (each two minutes) by means of a water level sensor positioned at the subcatchent’s outlet (Fig. 2). The climatic forcing (precipitation, air temperature, air humidity, solar radiation, snow cover depth, snow temperature, etc.) are recorded each ten minutes using a meteo-hydrological station placed at less than to 1.3 Km from the experimental site (Fig. 2).
Furthermore, in the subcatchment a TDR (Time Domain Reflectometry) system is installed covering a transect of about 60 meters with 11 sampling points for soil moisture measurements (with sampling frequency of 1 hour) at two different depths (30 and 60 cm) (see Fig. 3). The acquisition of the data is based on a GSM real time remote control system.
