We recently discovered that unreasonably high soil moistures are sometimes being reported in the soil water content and salinity data product (DP1.00094.001) at many terrestrial sites.
The issue is caused when the sensor reports a value above the high end of the calibration data used to generate the soil-specific calibration and when the calibration equation had a shallow slope at those high soil moistures. The threshold that this impact begins to impact the soil moisture data varies among sites and depths, but in general soil water content values above ~0.4 cm3 cm-3 should be treated with caution while we address this issue (values below this threshold are typically not affected).
We are in the process of developing a solution to correct this issue for all future and previously collected data, but we do not currently expect this to be implemented until March 2020 at the earliest. In the meantime, we will adjust the high-end range threshold in the automated QA/QC tests to flag the affected data. Please use the data portal contact form for further inquiries; please select DP1.10094.001 in the Data Product dropdown list and include the term "INC0033810" in the body of your request.