Spatial downscaling of coarse passive radiometer soil moisture using radar, vegetation index and surface temperature

Soil moisture derived from passive microwave radiometers have low spatial resolution due to limitation of antenna size. In the case of many geophysical applications high spatial resolution is desired, examples of these include weather, catchment hydrology and agriculture. In this paper we present two innovative methods to downscale passive soil moisture retrievals using (a) radar backscatter and (b) vegetation index and surface temperature.