scholarly journals SMAP-HydroBlocks, a 30-m satellite-based soil moisture dataset for the conterminous US

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noemi Vergopolan ◽  
Nathaniel W. Chaney ◽  
Ming Pan ◽  
Justin Sheffield ◽  
Hylke E. Beck ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Temporal Correlation ◽  
Ecosystem Dynamics ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Current State ◽  
Current Monitoring ◽  
Radiative Transfer Modeling

AbstractSoil moisture plays a key role in controlling land-atmosphere interactions, with implications for water resources, agriculture, climate, and ecosystem dynamics. Although soil moisture varies strongly across the landscape, current monitoring capabilities are limited to coarse-scale satellite retrievals and a few regional in-situ networks. Here, we introduce SMAP-HydroBlocks (SMAP-HB), a high-resolution satellite-based surface soil moisture dataset at an unprecedented 30-m resolution (2015–2019) across the conterminous United States. SMAP-HB was produced by using a scalable cluster-based merging scheme that combines high-resolution land surface modeling, radiative transfer modeling, machine learning, SMAP satellite microwave data, and in-situ observations. We evaluated the resulting dataset over 1,192 observational sites. SMAP-HB performed substantially better than the current state-of-the-art SMAP products, showing a median temporal correlation of 0.73 ± 0.13 and a median Kling-Gupta Efficiency of 0.52 ± 0.20. The largest benefit of SMAP-HB is, however, the high spatial detail and improved representation of the soil moisture spatial variability and spatial accuracy with respect to SMAP products. The SMAP-HB dataset is available via zenodo and at https://waterai.earth/smaphb.

A data-driven approach for mapping global surface soil moisture at 100 m using high-resolution remote sensing data and land surface parameters

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingyi Huang ◽  
Ankur Desai ◽  
Jun Zhu ◽  
Alfred Hartemink ◽  
Paul Stoy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Field Scale ◽  
Land Surface Parameters ◽  
Global Surface

<p>Current in situ soil moisture monitoring networks are sparsely distributed while remote sensing satellite soil moisture maps have a very coarse spatial resolution. In this study, an empirical global surface soil moisture (SSM) model was established via fusion of in situ continental and regional scale soil moisture networks, remote sensing data (SMAP and Sentinel-1) and high-resolution land surface parameters (e.g., soil texture, terrain) using a quantile random forest (QRF) algorithm. The model had a spatial resolution of 100m and performed moderately well under cultivated, herbaceous, forest, and shrub soils (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.524, RMSE = 0.07 m<sup>3</sup> m<sup>−3</sup>). It has a relatively good transferability at the regional scale among different continental and regional networks (mean RMSE = 0.08–0.10 m<sup>3</sup> m<sup>−3</sup>). The global model was then applied to map SSM dynamics at 30–100m across a field-scale network (TERENO-Wüstebach) in Germany and an 80-ha irrigated cropland in Wisconsin, USA. Without local training data, the model was able to delineate the variations in SSM at the field scale but contained large bias. With the addition of 10% local training datasets (“spiking”), the bias of the model was significantly reduced. The QRF model was also affected by the resolution and accuracy of soil maps. It was concluded that the empirical model has the potential to be applied elsewhere across the globe to map SSM at the regional to field scales for research and applications. Future research is required to improve the performance of the model by incorporating more field-scale soil moisture sensor networks and high-resolution soil maps as well as assimilation with process-based water flow models.</p>

scholarly journals Evaluation of TOPMODEL-Based Land Surface–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (TOPLATS) through a Soil Moisture Simulation

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (15) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolei Fu ◽  
Lifeng Luo ◽  
Ming Pan ◽  
Zhongbo Yu ◽  
Ying Tang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Absolute Difference ◽  
Coarse Scale ◽  
Transfer Scheme ◽  
Surface Atmosphere ◽  
Spatial Coverage

Abstract Better quantification of the spatiotemporal distribution of soil moisture across different spatial scales contributes significantly to the understanding of land surface processes on the Earth as an integrated system. While observational data for root-zone soil moisture (RZSM) often have sparse spatial coverage, model-simulated soil moisture may provide a useful alternative. TOPMODEL-Based Land Surface–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (TOPLATS) has been widely studied and actively modified in recent years, while a detailed regional application with evaluation currently is still lacking. Thus, TOPLATS was used to generate high-resolution (30 arc s) RZSM based on coarse-scale (0.125°) forcing data over part of the Arkansas–Red River basin. First, the simulated RZSM was resampled to coarse scale to compare with the results of Mosaic, Noah, and VIC from NLDAS. Second, TOPLATS performance was assessed based on the spatial absolute difference among the models. The comparison shows that TOPLATS performance is similar to VIC, but different from Mosaic and Noah. Last, the simulated RZSM was compared with in situ observations of 16 stations in the study area. The results suggest that the simulated spatial distribution of RZSM is largely consistent with the distribution of topographic index (TI) in most instances, as topography was traditionally considered a major, but not the only, factor in horizontal redistribution of soil moisture. In addition, the finer-resolution RZSM can reflect the in situ soil moisture change at most local sites to a certain degree. The evaluation confirms that TOPLATS is a useful tool to estimate high-resolution soil moisture and has great potential to provide regional soil moisture estimates.

scholarly journals Disaggregation of SMAP Soil Moisture at 20 m Resolution: Validation and Sub-Field Scale Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 167
Author(s):  
Giovanni Paolini ◽  
Maria Jose Escorihuela ◽  
Joaquim Bellvert ◽  
Olivier Merlin
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Temporal Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Field Scale ◽  
In Situ Data ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Spatio Temporal

This paper introduces a modified version of the DisPATCh (Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change) algorithm to disaggregate an SMAP surface soil moisture (SSM) product at a 20 m spatial resolution, through the use of sharpened Sentinel-3 land surface temperature (LST) data. Using sharpened LST as a high resolution proxy of SSM is a novel approach that needs to be validated and can be employed in a variety of applications that currently lack in a product with a similar high spatio-temporal resolution. The proposed high resolution SSM product was validated against available in situ data for two different fields, and it was also compared with two coarser DisPATCh products produced, disaggregating SMAP through the use of an LST at 1 km from Sentinel-3 and MODIS. From the correlation between in situ data and disaggregated SSM products, a general improvement was found in terms of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (R) for the proposed high resolution product with respect to the two products at 1 km. For the first field analyzed, R was equal to 0.47 when considering the 20 m product, an improvement compared to the 0.28 and 0.39 for the 1 km products. The improvement was especially noticeable during the summer season, in which it was only possible to successfully capture field-specific irrigation practices at the 20 m resolution. For the second field, R was 0.31 for the 20 m product, also an improvement compared to the 0.21 and 0.23 for the 1 km product. Additionally, the new product was able to depict SSM spatial variability at a sub-field scale and a validation analysis is also proposed at this scale. The main advantage of the proposed product is its very high spatio-temporal resolution, which opens up new opportunities to apply remotely sensed SSM data in disciplines that require fine spatial scales, such as agriculture and water management.

scholarly journals Mapping Soil Moisture at a High Resolution over Mountainous Regions by Integrating In Situ Measurements, Topography Data, and MODIS Land Surface Temperatures

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Fan ◽  
A. Al-Yaari ◽  
Frédéric Frappart ◽  
Jennifer Swenson ◽  
Qing Xiao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
In Situ Measurements ◽  
Mountainous Regions ◽  
Elevation Data ◽  
Agricultural Applications ◽  
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ◽  
Topography Data

Hydro-agricultural applications often require surface soil moisture (SM) information at high spatial resolutions. In this study, daily spatial patterns of SM at a spatial resolution of 1 km over the Babao River Basin in northwestern China were mapped using a Bayesian-based upscaling algorithm, which upscaled point-scale measurements to the grid-scale (1 km) by retrieving SM information using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-derived land surface temperature (LST) and topography data (including aspect and elevation data) and in situ measurements from a wireless sensor network (WSN). First, the time series of pixel-scale (1 km) representative SM information was retrieved from in situ measurements of SM, topography data, and LST. Second, Bayesian linear regression was used to calibrate the relationship between the representative SM and the WSN measurements. Last, the calibrated relationship was used to upscale a network of in situ measured SM to map spatially continuous SM at a high resolution. The upscaled SM data were evaluated against ground-based SM measurements with satisfactory accuracy—the overall correlation coefficient (r), slope, and unbiased root mean square difference (ubRMSD) values were 0.82, 0.61, and 0.025 m3/m3, respectively. Moreover, when accounting for topography, the proposed upscaling algorithm outperformed the algorithm based only on SM derived from LST (r = 0.80, slope = 0.31, and ubRMSD = 0.033 m3/m3). Notably, the proposed upscaling algorithm was able to capture the dynamics of SM under extreme dry and wet conditions. In conclusion, the proposed upscaled method can provide accurate high-resolution SM estimates for hydro-agricultural applications.

scholarly journals NOAA Satellite Soil Moisture Operational Product System (SMOPS) Version 3.0 Generates Higher Accuracy Blended Satellite Soil Moisture

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 2861
Author(s):  
Jifu Yin ◽  
Xiwu Zhan ◽  
Jicheng Liu
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Product System ◽  
Global Soil ◽  
One Stop ◽  
Satellite Sensors ◽  
Blended Data

Soil moisture plays a vital role for the understanding of hydrological, meteorological, and climatological land surface processes. To meet the need of real time global soil moisture datasets, a Soil Moisture Operational Product System (SMOPS) has been developed at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to produce a one-stop shop for soil moisture observations from all available satellite sensors. What makes the SMOPS unique is its near real time global blended soil moisture product. Since the first version SMOPS publicly released in 2010, the SMOPS has been updated twice based on the users’ feedbacks through improving retrieval algorithms and including observations from new satellite sensors. The version 3.0 SMOPS has been operationally released since 2017. Significant differences in climatological averages lead to remarkable distinctions in data quality between the newest and the older versions of SMOPS blended soil moisture products. This study reveals that the SMOPS version 3.0 has overwhelming advantages of reduced data uncertainties and increased correlations with respect to the quality controlled in situ measurements. The new version SMOPS also presents more robust agreements with the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (ESA_CCI) soil moisture datasets. With the higher accuracy, the blended data product from the new version SMOPS is expected to benefit the hydrological, meteorological, and climatological researches, as well as numerical weather, climate, and water prediction operations.

scholarly journals Global downscaling of remotely sensed soil moisture using neural networks

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 5341-5356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyed Hamed Alemohammad ◽  
Jana Kolassa ◽  
Catherine Prigent ◽  
Filipe Aires ◽  
Pierre Gentine
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Ancillary Data ◽  
Repeat Time ◽  
Spatiotemporal Scales ◽  
Better Than

Abstract. Characterizing soil moisture at spatiotemporal scales relevant to land surface processes (i.e., of the order of 1 km) is necessary in order to quantify its role in regional feedbacks between the land surface and the atmospheric boundary layer. Moreover, several applications such as agricultural management can benefit from soil moisture information at fine spatial scales. Soil moisture estimates from current satellite missions have a reasonably good temporal revisit over the globe (2–3-day repeat time); however, their finest spatial resolution is 9 km. NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite has estimated soil moisture at two different spatial scales of 36 and 9 km since April 2015. In this study, we develop a neural-network-based downscaling algorithm using SMAP observations and disaggregate soil moisture to 2.25 km spatial resolution. Our approach uses the mean monthly Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI) as ancillary data to quantify the subpixel heterogeneity of soil moisture. Evaluation of the downscaled soil moisture estimates against in situ observations shows that their accuracy is better than or equal to the SMAP 9 km soil moisture estimates.

scholarly journals Spatial variability and its scale dependency of observed and modeled soil moisture over different climate regions

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 1177-1188 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Li ◽  
M. Rodell
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Spatial Variability ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Scale Dependency ◽  
Convex Shape ◽  
Spatial Moments ◽  
Environmental Controls

Abstract. Past studies on soil moisture spatial variability have been mainly conducted at catchment scales where soil moisture is often sampled over a short time period; as a result, the observed soil moisture often exhibited smaller dynamic ranges, which prevented the complete revelation of soil moisture spatial variability as a function of mean soil moisture. In this study, spatial statistics (mean, spatial variability and skewness) of in situ soil moisture, modeled and satellite-retrieved soil moisture obtained in a warm season (198 days) were examined over three large climate regions in the US. The study found that spatial moments of in situ measurements strongly depend on climates, with distinct mean, spatial variability and skewness observed in each climate zone. In addition, an upward convex shape, which was revealed in several smaller scale studies, was observed for the relationship between spatial variability of in situ soil moisture and its spatial mean when statistics from dry, intermediate, and wet climates were combined. This upward convex shape was vaguely or partially observable in modeled and satellite-retrieved soil moisture estimates due to their smaller dynamic ranges. Despite different environmental controls on large-scale soil moisture spatial variability, the correlation between spatial variability and mean soil moisture remained similar to that observed at small scales, which is attributed to the boundedness of soil moisture. From the smaller support (effective area or volume represented by a measurement or estimate) to larger ones, soil moisture spatial variability decreased in each climate region. The scale dependency of spatial variability all followed the power law, but data with large supports showed stronger scale dependency than those with smaller supports. The scale dependency of soil moisture variability also varied with climates, which may be linked to the scale dependency of precipitation spatial variability. Influences of environmental controls on soil moisture spatial variability at large scales are discussed. The results of this study should be useful for diagnosing large scale soil moisture estimates and for improving the estimation of land surface processes.

scholarly journals Impact of ASAR soil moisture data on the MM5 precipitation forecast for the Tanaro flood event of April 2009

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 3135-3149 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Panegrossi ◽  
R. Ferretti ◽  
L. Pulvirenti ◽  
N. Pierdicca
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Rain Gauge ◽  
Precipitation Forecast ◽  
Flood Event ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Moisture Field ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. The representation of land-atmosphere interactions in weather forecast models has a strong impact on the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) and, in turn, on the forecast. Soil moisture is one of the key variables in land surface modelling, and an inadequate initial soil moisture field can introduce major biases in the surface heat and moisture fluxes and have a long-lasting effect on the model behaviour. Detecting the variability of soil characteristics at small scales is particularly important in mesoscale models because of the continued increase of their spatial resolution. In this paper, the high resolution soil moisture field derived from ENVISAT/ASAR observations is used to derive the soil moisture initial condition for the MM5 simulation of the Tanaro flood event of April 2009. The ASAR-derived soil moisture field shows significantly drier conditions compared to the ECMWF analysis. The impact of soil moisture on the forecast has been evaluated in terms of predicted precipitation and rain gauge data available for this event have been used as ground truth. The use of the drier, highly resolved soil moisture content (SMC) shows a significant impact on the precipitation forecast, particularly evident during the early phase of the event. The timing of the onset of the precipitation, as well as the intensity of rainfall and the location of rain/no rain areas, are better predicted. The overall accuracy of the forecast using ASAR SMC data is significantly increased during the first 30 h of simulation. The impact of initial SMC on the precipitation has been related to the change in the water vapour field in the PBL prior to the onset of the precipitation, due to surface evaporation. This study represents a first attempt to establish whether high resolution SAR-based SMC data might be useful for operational use, in anticipation of the launch of the Sentinel-1 satellite.

scholarly journals Deriving surface soil moisture from reflected GNSS signal observations from a grassland site in southwestern France

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibo Zhang ◽  
Jean-Christophe Calvet ◽  
José Darrozes ◽  
Nicolas Roussel ◽  
Frédéric Frappart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Land Surface Model ◽  
Ground Surface ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Global Navigation Satellite ◽  
Grassland Site

Abstract. This work aims to assess the estimation of surface volumetric soil moisture (VSM) using the Global Navigation Satellite System Interferometric Reflectometry (GNSS-IR) technique. Year-round observations were acquired from a grassland site in southwestern France using an antenna consecutively placed at two contrasting heights above the ground surface (3.3 or 29.4 m). The VSM retrievals are compared with two independent reference datasets: in situ observations of soil moisture, and numerical simulations of soil moisture and vegetation biomass from the ISBA (Interactions between Soil, Biosphere and Atmosphere) land surface model. Scaled VSM estimates can be retrieved throughout the year removing vegetation effects by the separation of growth and senescence periods and by the filtering of the GNSS-IR observations that are most affected by vegetation. Antenna height has no significant impact on the quality of VSM estimates. Comparisons between the VSM GNSS-IR retrievals and the in situ VSM observations at a depth of 5 cm show a good agreement (R2 = 0.86 and RMSE = 0.04 m3 m−3). It is shown that the signal is sensitive to the grass litter water content and that this effect triggers differences between VSM retrievals and in situ VSM observations at depths of 1 cm and 5 cm, especially during light rainfall events.

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