Estimating Soil Moisture from Satellite Microwave Observations

Cooperative research in microwave remote sensing between the Hydrological Sciences Branch of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Earth Sciences Faculty of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam began with the Botswana Water and Energy Balance Experiment and has continued through a series of highly successful International Research Programs. The collaboration between these two research institutions has resulted in significant scientific achievements, most notably in the area of satellite-based microwave remote sensing of soil moisture. The Botswana Program was the first joint research initiative between these two institutions, and provided a unique data base which included historical data sets of Scanning Multifrequency Microwave Radiometer (SN4NM) data, climate information, and extensive soil moisture measurements over several large experimental sites in southeast Botswana. These data were the basis for the development of new approaches in physically-based inverse modelling of soil moisture from satellite microwave observations. Among the results from this study were quantitative estimates of vegetation transmission properties at microwave frequencies. A single polarization modelling approach which used horizontally polarized microwave observations combined with monthly composites of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was developed, and yielded good results. After more precise field experimentation with a ground-based radiometer system, a dual-polarization approach was subsequently developed. This new approach realized significant improvements in soil moisture estimation by satellite. Results from the Botswana study were subsequently applied to a desertification monitoring study for the country of Spain within the framework of the European Community science research programs EFEDA and RESMEDES. A dual frequency approach with only microwave data was used for this application. The Microwave Polarization Difference Index (MPDI) was calculated from 37 GHz data and used to derive the one-way canopy transmissivity. Using a simple radiative transfer model, this information was combined with horizontally polarized 6.6 GHz SMMR observations to derive a 9-year time series of soil moisture for all of Spain at a one quarter degree spatial scale. Both day and night SMMR observations were used independently, in order to check the consistency of the results. A first order Fourier Transform was performed on the mean monthly soil moisture values to identify major characteristics of time series such as trend, amplitude, and phase shift.