Search results for "water content"

Seasonal Analysis of Surface Soil Moisture Dry-Downs in a Land-Atmosphere Hotspot as Seen by LSM and Satellite Products

2018

The soil drying process is a challenging framework to assess climatic, hydrologic and ecosystem processes. This work develops a seasonal analysis of temporal e-folding decay ( $\tau$ ) of surface soil moisture dry-downs using ORCHIDEE land surface model and SMOS observations over South Eastern South America (SESA). Results show that the soil drying process depends on both location and season, and that the modeled drying velocity is faster than the observed one, even when modeled data is sampled at the same frequency as the observations. Differences between observed and modeled data have been found both in the analysis of the regional overall $\tau$ and in the spatial patterns of $\tau$ esti…

2019

Abstract. This study uses the synergy of multi-resolution soil moisture (SM) satellite estimates from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, a dense network of ground-based SM measurements, and a soil–vegetation–atmosphere transfer (SVAT) model, SURFEX (externalized surface), module ISBA (interactions between soil, biosphere and atmosphere), to examine the benefits of the SMOS level 4 (SMOS-L4) version 3.0, or “all weather” high-resolution soil moisture disaggregated product (SMOS-L43.0; ∼1 km). The added value compared to SMOS level 3 (SMOS-L3; ∼25 km) and SMOS level 2 (SMOS-L2; ∼15 km) is investigated. In situ SM observations over the Valencia anchor station (VAS; SMOS calibrati…

Intercomparison of Soil Moisture Retrieved from GNSS-R and from Passive L-Band Radiometry at the Valencia Anchor Station

2019

In this paper, the SOMOSTA (Soil Moisture Monitoring Station) experiment on the intercomparison of soil moisture monitoring from Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) signals and passive L-band microwave radiometer observations at the Valencia Anchor Station is introduced. The GNSS-R instrument has an up-looking antenna for receiving direct signals from satellites, and a dual-pol down-looking antenna for receiving LHCP (left-hand circular polarization) and RHCP (right-hand circular polarization) reflected signals from the soil surface. Data were collected from the three different antennas through the two channels of Oceanpal GNSS-R receiver and, in addition, calibration …

SMOS Level-2 Soil Moisture Product Evaluation in Rain-Fed Croplands of the Pampean Region of Argentina

2016

A field campaign was carried out to evaluate the Soil Moisture (SM) MIR-SMUDP2 product (v5.51) generated from the data of the Microwave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) aboard the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. The study area was the Pampean Region of Argentina, which was selected because it is a vast area of flatlands containing quite homogeneous rain-fed croplands, which are considered SMOS nominal land uses and hardly affected by radio-frequency interference contamination. Transects of ground handheld SM measurements were performed using ThetaProbe ML2x probes within four Icosahedral Snyder Equal Area Earth (ISEA) grid nodes, where permanent SM statio…

Two-year global simulation of L-band brightness temperatures over land

2003

International audience; This letter presents a synthetic L-band (1.4 GHz) multiangular brightness temperature dataset over land surfaces that was simulated at a half-degree resolution and at the global scale. The microwave emission of various land-covers (herbaceous and woody vegetation, frozen and unfrozen bare soil, snow, etc.) was computed using a simple model [L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB)] based on radiative transfer equations. The soil and vegetation characteristics needed to initialize the L-MEB model were derived from existing land-cover maps. Continuous simulations from a land-surface scheme for 1987 and 1988 provided time series of the main variables driving t…

Smap-based retrieval of vegetation opacity and albedo

2020

Over land the vegetation canopy affects the microwave brightness temperature by emission, scattering and attenuation of surface soil emission. The questions addressed in this study are: 1) what is the transparency of the vegetation canopy for different biomes around the Globe at the low-frequency L-band?, 2) what is the seasonal amplitude of vegetation microwave optical depth for different biomes?, 3) what is the effective scattering at this frequency for different vegetation types?, 4) what is the impact of imprecise characterization of vegetation microwave properties on retrieval of soil surface conditions? These questions are addressed based on the recently completed one full annual cycl…

Using Optical and Thermal Data for Tracking Snowmelt Processes in Alpine Area

2019

Alpine catchments represent a fundamental reservoir of fresh water at midlatitude. Remote sensing offers the opportunity to estimate snow properties in the optical, thermal and microwave domains. In particular, the possibility to estimate snow density from remote sensing is relevant and still represents a great challenge for the remote sensing scientific community. Since changes of snow density and liquid water content occur continuously in the snowpack, spatial and temporal patterns of optical and thermal data can give information about snowmelt processes. The main goal of this study is to evaluate if snow thermal inertia can be an indicator of snowmelt processes and to evaluate its relati…

Analysing the effect of land use and vegetation cover on soil infiltration in three contrasting environments in northeast Spain

2017

Este estudio presenta el análisis conjunto de la información obtenida a partir de 195 ensayos de infiltración en el campo, que fueron realizados mediante dispositivos de doble anillo. Los experimentos se realizaron en 20 situaciones contrastadas de usos del suelo, los cuales se encuentran distribuidos en tres contextos geográficos (costa NE de Cataluña, monte bajo del sector central del valle del Ebro y montaña media de la vertiente Sur del Pirineo central). El objetivo de esta investigación es determinar los factores más importantes que explican la variabilidad de la infiltración: uso del suelo, tipo de cubierta vegetal, características del suelo y del substrato rocoso, humedad del suelo y…

Validation of SMAP surface soil moisture products with core validation sites

2017

Abstract The NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission has utilized a set of core validation sites as the primary methodology in assessing the soil moisture retrieval algorithm performance. Those sites provide well-calibrated in situ soil moisture measurements within SMAP product grid pixels for diverse conditions and locations. The estimation of the average soil moisture within the SMAP product grid pixels based on in situ measurements is more reliable when location specific calibration of the sensors has been performed and there is adequate replication over the spatial domain, with an up-scaling function based on analysis using independent estimates of the soil moisture distributio…

Empirical and physical estimation of Canopy Water Content from CHRIS/PROBA data

2013

20 páginas, 4 tablas, 7 figuras.