Search results for "Vegetation optical depth"
showing 9 items of 19 documents
Time-variations of zeroth-order vegetation absorption and scattering at L-band
2021
Abstract Surface soil moisture and vegetation optical depth (VOD), as an indicator of vegetation wet biomass, from passive microwave remote sensing have been increasingly applied in global ecology and climate research. Both soil moisture and VOD are retrieved from satellite brightness temperature measurements assuming a zeroth order radiative transfer model, commonly known as the tau-omega model. In this model the emission of a vegetated surface is dependent on soil moisture, vegetation absorption and vegetation scattering. Vegetation scattering is normally represented by the single scattering albedo, ω, and is commonly assumed to be a time-invariant calibration parameter to achieve high ac…
Monitoring tropical forests under a functional perspective with satellite-based vegetation optical depth.
2020
Monitoring ecosystem functions in forests is a priority in a climate change scenario, as climate-induced events may initially alter the functions more than slow-changing attributes, such as biomass. The ecosystem functional properties (EFPs) are quantities that characterize key ecosystem processes. They can be derived by point observations of gas and energy exchanges between the ecosystems and the atmosphere that are collected globally at FLUXNET flux tower sites and upscaled at ecosystem level. The properties here considered describe the ability of ecosystems to optimize the use of resources for carbon uptake. They represent functional forest information, are dependent on environmental dri…
Synergistic integration of optical and microwave satellite data for crop yield estimation
2019
Developing accurate models of crop stress, phenology and productivity is of paramount importance, given the increasing need of food. Earth observation (EO) remote sensing data provides a unique source of information to monitor crops in a temporally resolved and spatially explicit way. In this study, we propose the combination of multisensor (optical and microwave) remote sensing data for crop yield estimation and forecasting using two novel approaches. We first propose the lag between Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) derived from MODIS and Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD) derived from SMAP as a new joint metric combining the information from the two satellite sensors in a unique feature or des…
Alternate Inrae-Bordeaux VOD Indices from SMOS, AMSR2 and ASCAT: Overview of Recent Developments
2021
International audience; Vegetation optical depth (VOD) is used to parameterize microwave extinction effects within the vegetation layer. Many studies have showed VOD presents interesting features for applications in ecology, water and carbon cycles, and VOD is only marginally impacted by signal disturbances and artefacts from atmospheric, cloud and sun illumination effects. As soil moisture (and not VOD) has generally been the main factor of interest in retrieval studies from microwave observations, there is room for improvement in the retrieved VOD products. In this context, INRAE Bordeaux recently developed alternate VOD products from the SMOS, AMSR2 and ASCAT sensors, by addressing speci…
First Retrievals of ASCAT-IB VOD (Vegetation Optical Depth) at Global Scale
2021
Global and long-term vegetation optical depth (VOD) dataset are very useful to monitor the dynamics of the vegetation features, climate and environmental changes. In this study, the radar-based global ASCAT (Advanced SCATterometer) IB (INRAE-BORDEAUX) VOD was retrieved using a model which was recently calibrated over Africa. In order to assess the performance of IB VOD, the Saatchi biomass and three other VOD datasets (ASCAT V16, AMSR2 LPRM V5 and VODCA LPRM V6) derived from C-band observations were used in the comparison. The preliminary results show that IB VOD has a promising ability to predict biomass $(\mathrm{R}=0.74,\ \text{RMSE} =44.82\ \text{Mg}\ \text{ha}^{-1})$ , which is better …
A combined optical-microwave method to retrieve soil moisture over vegetated areas
2011
A simple approach for correcting for the effect of vegetation in the estimation of the surface soil moisture (wS) from L-band passive microwave observations is presented in this study. The approach is based on semi-empirical relationships between soil moisture and the polarized reflectivity including the effect of the vegetation optical depth which is parameterized as a function of the normalized vegetation difference index (NDVI). The method was tested against in situ measurements collected over a grass site from 2004 to 2007 (SMOSREX experiment). Two polarizations (horizontal/vertical) and five incidence angles (20◦, 30◦, 40◦, 50◦, and 60◦) were considered in the analysis. The best wS est…
Global Long-Term Brightness Temperature Record from L-Band SMOS and Smap Observations
2021
Passive microwave remote sensing observations at L-band provide key and global information on surface soil moisture (SM) and vegetation optical depth (VOD), which are related to the Earth water and carbon cycles. Only two spaceborne L-band sensors are currently operating: SMOS, launched end of 2009 and thus providing now a 11-year global dataset and SMAP, launched beginning of 2015. To ensure SM and L-VOD data continuity in the event of failure of one of the space-borne SMOS or SMAP sensors, we developed a consistent brightness temperature (TB) record by first producing consistent 40° SMOS and SMAP TB estimates based on SMOS-IC and SMAP enhanced data resp., and then fusing them via linear f…
SMAP Multi-Temporal vegetation optical depth retrieval as an indicator of crop yield trends and crop composition
2017
Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD) is related to Vegetation Water Content (VWC). This provides new and highly valuable information for ecological and agricultural studies. In this work, VOD from the Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) satellite has been retrieved with the new Multi-Temporal Dual-Channel Algorithm (MT-DCA). Then, it has been applied to the study of crop yield trends and crop composition. The increase on VOD (¿VOD) during crop development has been compared to yield data in two selected regions located in the United States. The first region presents a heterogeneous crop composition and weak ¿VOD-yield relationship (r2=0.21). The second region presents a highly homogenous cover and…
SMOS-IC: An Alternative SMOS Soil Moisture and Vegetation Optical Depth Product
2017
© 2017 by the authors. The main goal of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission over land surfaces is the production of global maps of soil moisture (SM) and vegetation optical depth (τ) based on multi-angular brightness temperature (TB) measurements at L-band. The operational SMOS Level 2 and Level 3 soil moisture algorithms account for different surface effects, such as vegetation opacity and soil roughness at 4 km resolution, in order to produce global retrievals of SM and τ. In this study, we present an alternative SMOS product that was developed by INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) and CESBIO (Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la BIOsphère). One of the main go…