SMAP Detects Soil Moisture Under Temperate Forest Canopies
Name
2020GL089697.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.81 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
62658dd2e06283a5d4a7fd20c23da0d9
Author(s)
Colliander, Andreas
Cosh, Michael H
Kelly, Vicky R
Kraatz, Simon
Bourgeau-Chavez, Laura
Siqueira, Paul
Roy, Alexandre
Konings, Alexandra G
Holtzman, Natan
Misra, Sidharth
Date Issued
September 2020
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Colliander, A., Cosh, M. H., Kelly, V. R.,Kraatz, S., BourgeauChavez, L.,Siqueira, P., et al. (2020). SMAP detects soil moisture under temperate forest canopies. Geophysical Research Letters,47 ©2020 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Soil moisture dynamics in the presence of dense vegetation canopies are determinants of ecosystem function and biogeochemical cycles, but the capability of existing spaceborne sensors to support reliable and useful estimates is not known. New results from a recently initiated field experiment in the northeast United States show that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) satellite is capable of retrieving soil moisture under temperate forest canopies. We present an analysis demonstrating that a parameterized emission model with the SMAP morning overpass brightness temperature resulted in a RMSD (root-mean-square difference) range of 0.047–0.057 m3/m3 and a Pearson correlation range of 0.75–0.85 depending on the experiment location and the SMAP polarization. The inversion approach included a minimal amount of ancillary data. This result demonstrates unequivocally that spaceborne L-band radiometry is sensitive to soil moisture under temperate forest canopies, which has been uncertain because of lack of representative reference data.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL089697
