scholarly journals Establishing an Empirical Model for Surface Soil Moisture Retrieval at the U.S. Climate Reference Network Using Sentinel-1 Backscatter and Ancillary Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumanta Chatterjee ◽  
Jingyi Huang ◽  
Alfred E. Hartemink

Progress in sensor technologies has allowed real-time monitoring of soil water. It is a challenge to model soil water content based on remote sensing data. Here, we retrieved and modeled surface soil moisture (SSM) at the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) stations using Sentinel-1 backscatter data from 2016 to 2018 and ancillary data. Empirical machine learning models were established between soil water content measured at the USCRN stations with Sentinel-1 data from 2016 to 2017, the National Land Cover Dataset, terrain parameters, and Polaris soil data, and were evaluated in 2018 at the same USCRN stations. The Cubist model performed better than the multiple linear regression (MLR) and Random Forest (RF) model (R2 = 0.68 and RMSE = 0.06 m3 m-3 for validation). The Cubist model performed best in Shrub/Scrub, followed by Herbaceous and Cultivated Crops but poorly in Hay/Pasture. The success of SSM retrieval was mostly attributed to soil properties, followed by Sentinel-1 backscatter data, terrain parameters, and land cover. The approach shows the potential for retrieving SSM using Sentinel-1 data in a combination of high-resolution ancillary data across the conterminous United States (CONUS). Future work is required to improve the model performance by including more SSM network measurements, assimilating Sentinel-1 data with other microwave, optical and thermal remote sensing products. There is also a need to improve the spatial resolution and accuracy of land surface parameter products (e.g., soil properties and terrain parameters) at the regional and global scales.

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 1849-1862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wade T. Crow ◽  
Eunjin Han ◽  
Dongryeol Ryu ◽  
Christopher R. Hain ◽  
Martha C. Anderson

Abstract. Due to their shallow vertical support, remotely sensed surface soil moisture retrievals are commonly regarded as being of limited value for water budget applications requiring the characterization of temporal variations in total terrestrial water storage (dS ∕ dt). However, advances in our ability to estimate evapotranspiration remotely now allow for the direct evaluation of approaches for quantifying dS ∕ dt via water budget closure considerations. By applying an annual water budget analysis within a series of medium-scale (2000–10 000 km2) basins within the United States, we demonstrate that, despite their clear theoretical limitations, surface soil moisture retrievals derived from passive microwave remote sensing contain statistically significant information concerning dS ∕ dt. This suggests the possibility of using (relatively) higher-resolution microwave remote sensing products to enhance the spatial resolution of dS ∕ dt estimates acquired from gravity remote sensing.


2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1323-1337 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Albergel ◽  
C. Rüdiger ◽  
T. Pellarin ◽  
J.-C. Calvet ◽  
N. Fritz ◽  
...  

Abstract. A long term data acquisition effort of profile soil moisture is under way in southwestern France at 13 automated weather stations. This ground network was developed in order to validate remote sensing and model soil moisture estimates. In this paper, both those in situ observations and a synthetic data set covering continental France are used to test a simple method to retrieve root zone soil moisture from a time series of surface soil moisture information. A recursive exponential filter equation using a time constant, T, is used to compute a soil water index. The Nash and Sutcliff coefficient is used as a criterion to optimise the T parameter for each ground station and for each model pixel of the synthetic data set. In general, the soil water indices derived from the surface soil moisture observations and simulations agree well with the reference root-zone soil moisture. Overall, the results show the potential of the exponential filter equation and of its recursive formulation to derive a soil water index from surface soil moisture estimates. This paper further investigates the correlation of the time scale parameter T with soil properties and climate conditions. While no significant relationship could be determined between T and the main soil properties (clay and sand fractions, bulk density and organic matter content), the modelled spatial variability and the observed inter-annual variability of T suggest that a weak climate effect may exist.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Gomez ◽  
Dharumarajan Subramanian ◽  
Philippe Lagacherie ◽  
Jean Riotte ◽  
Sylvain Ferrant ◽  
...  

<p>Mapping soil properties is becoming more and more challenging due to the increase in anthropogenic modification of the landscape, calling for new methods to identify these changes. A striking example of anthropogenic modifications of soil properties is the widespread practice in South India of applying large quantities of silt from dry river dams (or “tanks”) to agricultural fields. Whereas several studies have demonstrated the interest of tank silt for soil fertility, no assessment of the actual extent of this age-old traditional practice exists. Over pedological contexts characterized by Vertisol, Ferralsols and Chromic Luvisols in sub-humid and semi-arid Tropical climate, this practice is characterized by an application of black-colored tank silt providing from Vertisol, to red-colored soils such as Ferralsols. The objective of this work was to evaluate the usefulness of Sentinel-2 images for mapping tank silt applications, hypothesizing that observed changes in soil surface color can be a proxy for tank silt application.</p><p>We used data collected in a cultivated watershed (Berambadi, Karnataka state, South India) including 217 soil surface samples characterized in terms of Munsell color. We used two Sentinel-2 images acquired on February 2017 and April 2017. The surface soil color over each Sentinel-2 image was classified into two-class (“Black” and “Red” soils). A change of soil color from “Red” in February 2017 to “Black” in April 2017 was attributed to tank silt application. Soil color changes were analyzed accounting for possible surface soil moisture changes. The proposed methodology was based on a well-balanced Calibration data created from the initial imbalanced Calibration dataset thanks to the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) methodology, coupled to the Cost-Sensitive Classification And Regression Trees (Cost-Sensitive CART) algorithm. To estimate the uncertainties of i) the two-class classification at each date and ii) the change of soil color from “Red” to “Black”, a bootstrap procedure was used providing fifty two-class classifications for each Sentinel-2 image.</p><p>The results showed that 1) the CART method allowed to classify the “Red” and “Black” soil with overall accuracy around 0.81 and 0.76 from the Sentinel-2 image acquired on February and April 2017, respectively, 2) a tank silt application was identified over 97 fields with high confidence and over 107 fields with medium confidence, based on the bootstrap results and 3) the identified soil color changes are not related to a surface soil moisture change between both dates. With the actual availability of the Sentinel-2 and the past availability of the LANDSAT satellite imageries, this study may open a way toward a simple and accurate method for delivering tank silt application mapping and so to study and possibly quantify retroactively this farmer practice.</p>


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 3223
Author(s):  
Hamed Adab ◽  
Renato Morbidelli ◽  
Carla Saltalippi ◽  
Mahmoud Moradian ◽  
Gholam Abbas Fallah Ghalhari

Soil moisture is an integral quantity parameter in hydrology and agriculture practices. Satellite remote sensing has been widely applied to estimate surface soil moisture. However, it is still a challenge to retrieve surface soil moisture content (SMC) data in the heterogeneous catchment at high spatial resolution. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the retrieval of SMC from remote sensing data, which is important in the planning and efficient use of land resources. Many methods based on satellite-derived vegetation indices have already been developed to estimate SMC in various climatic and geographic conditions. Soil moisture retrievals were performed using statistical and machine learning methods as well as physical modeling techniques. In this study, an important experiment of soil moisture retrieval for investigating the capability of the machine learning methods was conducted in the early spring season in a semi-arid region of Iran. We applied random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), artificial neural network (ANN), and elastic net regression (EN) algorithms to soil moisture retrieval by optical and thermal sensors of Landsat 8 and knowledge of land-use types on previously untested conditions in a semi-arid region of Iran. The statistical comparisons show that RF method provided the highest Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency value (0.73) for soil moisture retrieval covered by the different land-use types. Combinations of surface reflectance and auxiliary geospatial data can provide more valuable information for SMC estimation, which shows promise for precision agriculture applications.


2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rida Khellouk ◽  
Ahmed Barakat ◽  
Abdelghani Boudhar ◽  
Rachid Hadria ◽  
Hayat Lionboui ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 866-876
Author(s):  
Ying Liu ◽  
Hui Yue

Abstract To understand the influence of underground mining disturbances on the shallow soil moisture in the Daliuta coal mine, remote sensing monitoring of the temporal and spatial evolution of surface soil moisture and the influence of mining on multi-source, multi-temporal and high spatial resolution remote sensing data were carried out. The scale effect of monitoring the soil moisture at different scales was analyzed using the Scaled Soil Moisture Monitor Index (S-SMMI). In this paper, SPOT 5/6 and Worldview-2 were used as the data source and mainly made up two aspects of the research: 1) based on the three SPOT data sets with the use of S-SMMI from different angles from the Daliuta mine from nearly three years of soil moisture temporal and spatial changes, the results show that the perturbation has a negative effect on the shallow soil moisture in the Daliuta coal mine, and average soil moisture of the mining area is smaller than the non-mining area, but the surface ecological construction has effectively improved the impact of the underground mining disturbance on the surface soil moisture. 2) the scale conversion of Worldview-2 data was carried out based on the resampling method. S-SMMI was used to analyze the scale effect of soil moisture monitoring at different scales. The results show that the difference between the soil moisture is only 0.0016 during the conversion process of 2 m-30 m.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 979-990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Y. Liu ◽  
J. P. Evans ◽  
M. F. McCabe ◽  
R. A. M. de Jeu ◽  
A. I. J. M. van Dijk ◽  
...  

Abstract. Vertisols are clay soils that are common in the monsoonal and dry warm regions of the world. One of the characteristics of these soil types is to form deep cracks during periods of extended dry, resulting in significant variation of the soil and hydrologic properties. Understanding the influence of these varying soil properties on the hydrological behavior of the system is of considerable interest, particularly in the retrieval or simulation of soil moisture. In this study we compare surface soil moisture (θ in m3 m−3) retrievals from AMSR-E using the VUA-NASA (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in collaboration with NASA) algorithm with simulations from the Community Land Model (CLM) over vertisol regions of mainland Australia. For the three-year period examined here (2003–2005), both products display reasonable agreement during wet periods. During dry periods however, AMSR-E retrieved near surface soil moisture falls below values for surrounding non-clay soils, while CLM simulations are higher. CLM θ are also higher than AMSR-E and their difference keeps increasing throughout these dry periods. To identify the possible causes for these discrepancies, the impacts of land use, topography, soil properties and surface temperature used in the AMSR-E algorithm, together with vegetation density and rainfall patterns, were investigated. However these do not explain the observed θ responses. Qualitative analysis of the retrieval model suggests that the most likely reason for the low AMSR-E θ is the increase in soil porosity and surface roughness resulting from cracking of the soil. To quantitatively identify the role of each factor, more in situ measurements of soil properties that can represent different stages of cracking need to be collected. CLM does not simulate the behavior of cracking soils, including the additional loss of moisture from the soil continuum during drying and the infiltration into cracks during rainfall events, which results in overestimated θ when cracks are present. The hydrological influence of soil physical changes are expected to propagate through the modeled system, such that modeled infiltration, evaporation, surface temperature, surface runoff and groundwater recharge should be interpreted with caution over these soil types when cracks might be present. Introducing temporally dynamic roughness and soil porosity into retrieval algorithms and adding a "cracking clay" module into models are expected to improve the representation of vertisol hydrology.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 708-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingming Zheng ◽  
Kai Zhao ◽  
Yanling Ding ◽  
Tao Jiang ◽  
Shiyi Zhang ◽  
...  

Northeast China (NEC) has become one of China's most obvious examples of climate change because of its rising warming rate of 0.35 °C/10 years. As the indicator of climate change, the dynamic of surface soil moisture (SSM) has not been assessed yet. We investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of SSM in NEC using a 32-year SSM product and found the following. (1) SSM displayed the characteristics of being dry in the west and wet in the east and decreased with time. (2) The seasonal difference was found for the temporal dynamics of SSM: it increased in summer and decreased in spring and autumn. (3) For all four regions studied, the temporal dynamics of SSM were similar to those of the whole of NEC, but with different rates of SSM change. Moreover, SSM in regions B and D had a lower spatial variance than the other two regions because of the stable spatial pattern of cropland. (4) The change rates for SSM were consistent with that observed for the warming rates, which indicated that SSM levels derived from remote sensing data will correlate with climate change. In summary, a wetter summer and a drier spring and autumn were observed in NEC over the past 30 years.


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