On the monitoring of antecedent wetness conditions across different scales

The importance of soil moisture for hydrological applications is widely recognized. In recent scientific literature many examples show that soil moisture is one of the most important state variable to predict the rainfall-infiltrationrunoff partitioning with reduced uncertainty. Therefore, for stakeholders involved in flood management aiming at flood risk prevention and mitigation, an accurate estimation of the initial state of the catchment wetness is of great importance.