Summary of remote sensing methods for monitoring soil moisture

A comparison with traditional soil moisture monitoring methods shows that the remote sensing method has great superiority. This paper presents a review of the remote sensing methods currently used both in China and abroad for monitoring soil moisture,which include the reflectivity method,the vegetation index method,the surface temperature,temperature- vegetation index method,the crop water stress index method,the thermal inertia method and the microwave method,with a detailed comparative description of the advantages and disadvantages of these methods. Based on summarizing researches on remote sensing monitoring methods for soil water,this paper evaluated the focal points,difficulties and development trend of this research field. It is held that the thermal inertia method and the vegetation temperature index method are relatively mature methods for soil moisture monitoring. With the wide application of geographic information system,the microwave remote sensing will become the key research direction in this field because of its unique advantages.