scholarly journals Potential for the Detection of Irrigation Events on Maize Plots Using Sentinel-1 Soil Moisture Products

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 1621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Le Page ◽  
Lionel Jarlan ◽  
Marcel M. El Hajj ◽  
Mehrez Zribi ◽  
Nicolas Baghdadi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Water Balance ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Radar Data ◽  
Balance Model ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Upper Management ◽  
In Situ Data

Although the real timing and flow rates used for crop irrigation are controlled at the scale of individual plots by the irrigator, they are not generally known by the farm upper management. This information is nevertheless essential, not only to compute the water balance of irrigated plots and to schedule irrigation, but also for the management of water resources at regional scales. The aim of the present study was to detect irrigation timing using time series of surface soil moisture (SSM) derived from Sentinel-1 radar observations. The method consisted of assessing the direction of change of surface soil moisture (SSM) between observations and a water balance model, and to use thresholds to be calibrated. The performance of the approach was assessed on the F-score quantifying the accuracy of the irrigation event detections and ranging from 0 (none of the irrigation timing is correct) to 100 (perfect irrigation detection). The study focused on five irrigated and one rainfed plot of maize in South-West France, where the approach was tested using in situ measurements and surface soil moisture (SSM) maps derived from Sentinel-1 radar data. The use of in situ data showed that (1) irrigation timing was detected with a good accuracy (F-score in the range (80–83) for all plots) and (2) the optimal revisit time between two SSM observations was 2–4 days. The higher uncertainties of microwave SSM products, especially when the crop is well developed (normalized difference of vegetation index (NDVI) > 0.7), degraded the score (F-score = 69), but various possibilities of improvement were discussed. This paper opens perspectives for the irrigation detection at the plot scale over large areas and thus for the improvement of irrigation water management.

A performance assessment method for SAR satellite-derived surface soil moisture data using a soil-water balance model, meteorological observations, and soil pedotransfer functions.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Beale ◽  
Toby Waine ◽  
Ronald Corstanje ◽  
Jonathan Evans
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Water Balance ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Cosmic Ray ◽  
Water Balance Model ◽  
Balance Model ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture

<p>The validation of surface soil moisture products derived from SAR satellites data is challenged by the difficulty of reliably measuring in-situ soil moisture at shallow soil depths of a few centimetres, consistent with the penetration depth of the microwave beam. Our analysis shows that the apparent accuracy of the remote sensing products is underestimated by comparison with inconsistent probe data or measurements at greater soil depths. Our alternative approach uses in-situ meteorological measurements to determine rainfall and potential evapotranspiration, to be used with soil hydrological properties as inputs to a water balance model to estimate surface soil moisture independently of the satellite data. In-situ soil moisture measurements are used to validate and refine the model parameters. The choice of appropriate soil hydrological parameters with which to convert remotely sensed surface soil moisture indices to volumetric moisture content is shown to have a significant impact on the bias and offset in the regression analysis. To illustrate this, Copernicus SSM data is analysed by this method for a number of COSMOS-UK soil moisture monitoring sites, showing a significant improvement in the coefficient of determination, bias and offset over regression analysis using in-situ measurements from soil moisture probes or the cosmic ray soil moisture sensor itself. This will benefit users of such products in agriculture, for example, in determining actual soil moisture deficit.</p>

scholarly journals Detection of irrigation events on maize plots using sentinel-1 soil moisture products

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Le Page ◽  
Lionel Jarlan ◽  
Aaron Boone ◽  
Mohammad El Hajj ◽  
Nicolas Baghdadi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Water Balance ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
In Situ Measurements ◽  
Irrigation Event ◽  
Balance Model ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture

<p>An accurate knowledge of irrigation timing and rate is essential to compute the water balance of irrigated plots. However, at the plot scale irrigation is a data essentially known by the irrigator. These data do not go up to higher management scales, thus limiting both the management of water resources on a regional scale and the development of irrigation decision support tools at the farm scale. The study focuses on 6 experimental plots in the south-west of France. The new method consists in assessing surface soil moisture (SSM) change between observations and a water balance model. The approach was tested using both in situ measurements and surface soil moisture (SSM) maps derived from Sentinel-1 radar data. The score is obtained by assessing if the irrigation event is detected within +/- three days. The use of in situ SSM showed that: (1) the best revisit time between two SSM observations is 3 days; short gaps is subject to uncertainties while longer gap miss possible SSM variations; (2) in general, higher rates (>20mm) of irrigation are well identified while it is very difficult to identify irrigation event when it is raining or when irrigation rates are small (<10mm). When using the SSM microwave product, the performances are degraded but are still acceptable given the discontinuity of irrigation events: 34% of absolute error and a bias of 5% for the whole season. Although high vegetation cover degrades the SSM absolute estimates, the dynamic appeared to be in accordance with in-situ measurements.</p>

Synergistic use of SMOS and Sentinel-3 for retrieving spatiotemporally estimates of surface soil moisture and evaporative fraction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Piles ◽  
Miriam Pablos Hernandez ◽  
Mercè Vall-llossera ◽  
Gerard Portal ◽  
Ionut Sandric ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Added Value ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Evaporative Fraction ◽  
In Situ Data

<p>Earth Observation (EO) makes it possible to obtain information on key parameters characterizing interactions among Earth’s system components, such as evaporative fraction (EF) and surface soil moisture (SSM). Notably, techniques utilizing EO data of land surface temperature (Ts) and vegetation index (VI) have shown promise in this regard. The present study presents an implementation of a downscaling method that combined the soil moisture product from SMOS and the Fractional Vegetation Cover provided by Sentinel 3 ESA platform.</p><p>The applicability of the investigated technique is demonstrated for a period of two years (2017-2018) using in-situ data acquired from five CarboEurope sites and from all the sites available in the REMEDHUS soil moisture monitoring network, representing a variety of climatic, topographic and environmental conditions. Predicted parameters were compared against co-orbital ground measurements acquired from several European sites belonging to the CarboEurope ground observational network.</p><p>Results indicated a close agreement between all the inverted parameters and the corresponding in-situ data. SSM maps predicted from the “triangle”  SSM showed a small bias,<sup></sup> but a large scatter. The results of this study provide strong supportive evidence of the potential value of the investigated herein methodology in accurately deriving estimates of key parameters characterising land surface interactions that can meet the needs of fine-scale hydrological applications. Moreover, the applicability of the presented approach demonstrates the added value of the synergy between ESA’s operational products acquired from different satellite sensors, namely in this case SMOS & Sentienl-3. As it is not tight to any particular sensor can also be implemented with technologically advanced EO sensors launched recently or planned to be launched.</p><p>In the present work Dr Petropoulos participation has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ENViSIoN under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752094.</p>

scholarly journals Evaluation of the AMSR2 L2 soil moisture product of JAXA on the Mongolian Plateau over seven years (2012–2018)

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ichirow Kaihotsu ◽  
Jun Asanuma ◽  
Kentaro Aida ◽  
Dambaravjaa Oyunbaatar
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Mongolian Plateau ◽  
Moisture Measurement ◽  
Rainfall Condition ◽  
Soil Moisture Measurement

Abstract This study evaluated the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) L2 soil moisture product (ver. 3) using in situ hydrological observational data, acquired over 7 years (2012–2018), from a 50 × 50 km flat area of the Mongolian Plateau covered with bare soil, pasture and shrubs. Although AMSR2 slightly underestimated soil moisture content at 3-cm depth, satisfactory timing was observed in both the response patterns and the in situ soil moisture data, and the differences between these factors were not large. In terms of the relationship between AMSR2 soil moisture from descending orbits and in situ measured soil moisture at 3-cm depth, the values of the RMSE (m3/m3) and the bias (m3/m3) varied from 0.028 to 0.063 and from 0.011 to − 0.001 m3/m3, respectively. The values of the RMSE and bias depended on rainfall condition. The mean value of the RMSE for the 7-year period was 0.042 m3/m3, i.e., lower than the target accuracy 0.050 m3/m3. The validation results for descending orbits were found slightly better than for ascending orbits. Comparison of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) soil moisture product with the AMSR2 L2 soil moisture product showed that AMSR2 could observe surface soil moisture with nearly same accuracy and stability. However, the bias of the AMSR2 soil moisture measurement was slightly negative and poorer than that of SMOS with deeper soil moisture measurement. It means that AMSR2 cannot effectively measure soil moisture at 3-cm depth. In situ soil temperature at 3-cm depth and surface vegetation (normalized difference vegetation index) did not influence the underestimation of AMSR2 soil moisture measurements. These results suggest that a possible cause of the underestimation of AMSR2 soil moisture measurements is the difference between the depth of the AMSR2 observations and in situ soil moisture measurements. Overall, this study proved the AMSR2 L2 soil moisture product has been useful for monitoring daily surface soil moisture over large grassland areas and it clearly demonstrated the high-performance capability of AMSR2 since 2012.

scholarly journals New Downscaling Approach Using ESA CCI SM Products for Obtaining High Resolution Surface Soil Moisture

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jovan Kovačević ◽  
Željko Cvijetinović ◽  
Nikola Stančić ◽  
Nenad Brodić ◽  
Dragan Mihajlović
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
In Situ Data ◽  
Random Forest Models

ESA CCI SM products have provided remotely-sensed surface soil moisture (SSM) content with the best spatial and temporal coverage thus far, although its output spatial resolution of 25 km is too coarse for many regional and local applications. The downscaling methodology presented in this paper improves ESA CCI SM spatial resolution to 1 km using two-step approach. The first step is used as a data engineering tool and its output is used as an input for the Random forest model in the second step. In addition to improvements in terms of spatial resolution, the approach also considers the problem of data gaps. The filling of these gaps is the initial step of the procedure, which in the end produces a continuous product in both temporal and spatial domains. The methodology uses combined active and passive ESA CCI SM products in addition to in situ soil moisture observations and the set of auxiliary downscaling predictors. The research tested several variants of Random forest models to determine the best combination of ESA CCI SM products. The conclusion is that synergic use of all ESA CCI SM products together with the auxiliary datasets in the downscaling procedure provides better results than using just one type of ESA CCI SM product alone. The methodology was applied for obtaining SSM maps for the area of California, USA during 2016. The accuracy of tested models was validated using five-fold cross-validation against in situ data and the best variation of model achieved RMSE, R2 and MAE of 0.0518 m3/m3, 0.7312 and 0.0374 m3/m3, respectively. The methodology proved to be useful for generating high-resolution SSM products, although additional improvements are necessary.

Surface soil moisture data assimilation for irrigation amounts and timing estimation in semi-arid regions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Ouaadi ◽  
Lionel Jarlan ◽  
Saïd Khabba ◽  
Jamal Ezzahar ◽  
Olivier Merlin
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Land Surface Model ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Field Scale ◽  
In Situ Data ◽  
Statistical Metrics

<p>Irrigation is the largest consumer of water in the world, with more than 70% of the world's fresh water dedicated to agriculture. In this context, we developed and evaluated a new method to predict daily to seasonal irrigation timing and amounts at the field scale using surface soil moisture (SSM) data assimilated into a simple  land surface model through a particle filter technique. The method is first tested using in situ SSM before using SSM products retrieved from Sentinel-1. Data collected on different wheat fields grown  in Morocco, for both flood and drip irrigation techniques, are used to assess the performance of the proposed method. With in situ data, the results are good. Seasonal amounts are retrieved with R > 0.98, RMSE <42 mm and bias<2 mm. Likewise, a good agreement is observed at the daily scale for flood irrigation where more than 70% of the irrigation events are detected with a time difference from actual irrigation events shorter than 4 days, when assimilating SSM observation every 6 days to mimics Sentinel-1 revisit time. Over the drip irrigated fields, the statistical metrics are R = 0.70, RMSE =28.5 mm and bias= -0.24 mm for irrigation amounts cumulated over 15 days. The approach is then evaluated using SSM products derived from Sentinel-1 data; statistical metrics are R= 0.64, RMSE= 28.78 mm and bias = 1.99 mm for irrigation amounts cumulated over 15 days. In addition to irrigated fields, the applicationof the developed methodover rainfed fieldsdid not detect any irrigation. This study opens perspectives for the regional retrieval of irrigation amounts and timing at the field scale and for mapping irrigated/non irrigated areas.</p>

scholarly journals C-band radar data and in situ measurements for the monitoring of wheat crops in a semi-arid area (center of Morocco)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Ouaadi ◽  
Jamal Ezzahar ◽  
Saïd Khabba ◽  
Salah Er-Raki ◽  
Adnane Chakir ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Radar Data ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Semi Arid

Abstract. A better understanding of the hydrological functioning of irrigated crops using remote sensing observations is of prime importance in the semi-arid areas where the water resources are limited. Radar observations, available at high resolution and revisit time since the launch of Sentinel-1 in 2014, have shown great potential for the monitoring of the water content of the upper soil and of the canopy. In this paper, a complete set of data for radar signal analysis is shared to the scientific community for the first time to our knowledge. The data set is composed of Sentinel-1 products and in situ measurements of soil and vegetation variables collected during three agricultural seasons over drip-irrigated winter wheat in the Haouz plain in Morocco. The in situ data gathers soil measurements (time series of half-hourly surface soil moisture, surface roughness and agricultural practices) and vegetation measurements collected every week/two weeks including above-ground fresh and dry biomasses, vegetation water content based on destructive measurements, cover fraction, leaf area index and plant height. Radar data are the backscattering coefficient and the interferometric coherence derived from Sentinel-1 GRDH (Ground Range Detected High resolution) and SLC (Single Look Complex) products, respectively. The normalized difference vegetation index derived from Sentinel-2 data based on Level-2A (surface reflectance and cloud mask) atmospheric effects-corrected products is also provided. This database, which is the first of its kind made available in open access, is described here comprehensively in order to help the scientific community to evaluate and to develop new or existing remote sensing algorithms for monitoring wheat canopy under semi-arid conditions. The data set is particularly relevant for the development of radar applications including surface soil moisture and vegetation parameters retrieval using either physically based or empirical approaches such as machine and deep learning algorithms. The database is archived in the DataSuds repository and is freely-accessible via the DOI: https://doi.org/10.23708/8D6WQC (Ouaadi et al., 2020a).

scholarly journals Satellite soil moisture data assimilation for improved operational continental water balance prediction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyuan Tian ◽  
Luigi J. Renzullo ◽  
Robert C. Pipunic ◽  
Julien Lerat ◽  
Wendy Sharples ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Data Assimilation ◽  
Water Balance ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Root Zone ◽  
In Situ Observation ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Time Step ◽  
Australian Water

Abstract. A simple and effective two-step data assimilation framework was developed to improve soil moisture representation in an operational large-scale water balance model. The first step is the sequential state updating process that exploits temporal covariance statistics between modelled and satellite-derived soil moisture to produce analysed estimates. The second step is to use analysed surface moisture estimates to impart mass conservation constraints (mass redistribution) on related states and fluxes of the model in a post-analysis adjustment after the state updating at each time step. In this study, we apply the data assimilation framework to the Australian Water Resources Assessment Landscape model (AWRA-L) and evaluate its impact on the model's accuracy against in-situ observations across water balance components. We show that the correlation between simulated surface soil moisture and in-situ observation increases from 0.54 (open-loop) to 0.77 (data assimilation). Furthermore, indirect verification of root-zone soil moisture using remotely sensed vegetation time series across cropland areas results in significant improvements of 0.11 correlation units. The improvements gained from data assimilation can persist for more than one week in surface soil moisture estimates and one month in root-zone soil moisture estimates, thus demonstrating the efficacy of this data assimilation framework.

scholarly journals Satellite soil moisture data assimilation for improved operational continental water balance prediction

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (8) ◽  
pp. 4567-4584
Author(s):  
Siyuan Tian ◽  
Luigi J. Renzullo ◽  
Robert C. Pipunic ◽  
Julien Lerat ◽  
Wendy Sharples ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Data Assimilation ◽  
Water Balance ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Root Zone ◽  
In Situ Observation ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Time Step ◽  
Australian Water

Abstract. A simple and effective two-step data assimilation framework was developed to improve soil moisture representation in an operational large-scale water balance model. The first step is a Kalman-filter-type sequential state updating process that exploits temporal covariance statistics between modelled and satellite-derived soil moisture to produce analysed estimates. The second step is to use analysed surface moisture estimates to impart mass conservation constraints (mass redistribution) on related states and fluxes of the model using tangent linear modelling theory in a post-analysis adjustment after the state updating at each time step. In this study, we assimilate satellite soil moisture retrievals from both Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) missions simultaneously into the Australian Water Resources Assessment Landscape model (AWRA-L) using the proposed framework and evaluate its impact on the model's accuracy against in situ observations across water balance components. We show that the correlation between simulated surface soil moisture and in situ observation increases from 0.54 (open loop) to 0.77 (data assimilation). Furthermore, indirect verification of root-zone soil moisture using remotely sensed Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) time series across cropland areas results in significant improvements from 0.52 to 0.64 in correlation. The improvements gained from data assimilation can persist for more than 1 week in surface soil moisture estimates and 1 month in root-zone soil moisture estimates, thus demonstrating the efficacy of this data assimilation framework.

scholarly journals C-band radar data and in situ measurements for the monitoring of wheat crops in a semi-arid area (center of Morocco)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3707-3731
Author(s):  
Nadia Ouaadi ◽  
Jamal Ezzahar ◽  
Saïd Khabba ◽  
Salah Er-Raki ◽  
Adnane Chakir ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Surface Soil ◽  
Radar Data ◽  
Surface Soil Moisture ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Semi Arid

Abstract. A better understanding of the hydrological functioning of irrigated crops using remote sensing observations is of prime importance in semi-arid areas where water resources are limited. Radar observations, available at high resolution and with a high revisit time since the launch of Sentinel-1 in 2014, have shown great potential for the monitoring of the water content of the upper soil and of the canopy. In this paper, a complete set of data for radar signal analysis is shared with the scientific community for the first time to our knowledge. The data set is composed of Sentinel-1 products and in situ measurements of soil and vegetation variables collected during three agricultural seasons over drip-irrigated winter wheat in the Haouz plain in Morocco. The in situ data gather soil measurements (time series of half-hourly surface soil moisture, surface roughness and agricultural practices) and vegetation measurements collected every week/2 weeks including aboveground fresh and dry biomasses, vegetation water content based on destructive measurements, the cover fraction, the leaf area index, and plant height. Radar data are the backscattering coefficient and the interferometric coherence derived from Sentinel-1 GRDH (Ground Range Detected High Resolution) and SLC (Single Look Complex) products, respectively. The normalized difference vegetation index derived from Sentinel-2 data based on Level-2A (surface reflectance and cloud mask) atmospheric-effects-corrected products is also provided. This database, which is the first of its kind made available open access, is described here comprehensively in order to help the scientific community to evaluate and to develop new or existing remote sensing algorithms for monitoring wheat canopy under semi-arid conditions. The data set is particularly relevant for the development of radar applications including surface soil moisture and vegetation variable retrieval using either physically based or empirical approaches such as machine and deep learning algorithms. The database is archived in the DataSuds repository and is freely accessible via the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.23708/8D6WQC (Ouaadi et al., 2020a).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document