scholarly journals A roadmap for high-resolution satellite soil moisture applications

Author(s):  
Jian Peng ◽  
Clement Albergel ◽  
Anna Balenzano ◽  
Luca Brocca ◽  
Olive Cartus ◽  
...  

<p>This contribution presents the main findings of a recently published review on high-resolution satellite soil moisture applications (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2020.112162). The scientific community has made significant progress in estimating soil moisture from satellite-based Earth observation data, particularly in operationalizing coarse-resolution (25-50 km) soil moisture products. This presentation summarizes existing applications of satellite-derived soil moisture products and identifies gaps between the characteristics of currently available soil moisture products and the application requirements from various disciplines. This presentation also discusses the efforts devoted to the generation of high-resolution soil moisture products from satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data such as Sentinel-1 C-band backscatter observations and through downscaling of existing coarse-resolution microwave soil moisture products. Open issues and future opportunities of soil moisture remote sensing are discussed, providing guidance for the further development of operational soil moisture products and for bridging the gap between the soil moisture user and supplier communities.</p><p>The <span>published review </span>is:</p><p>Peng, J., Albergel, C., Balenzano, A., Brocca, L., Cartus, O., Cosh, M.H., Crow, W.T., Dabrowska-Zielinska, K., Dadson, S., Davidson, M.W.J., de Rosnay, P., Dorigo, W., Gruber, A., Hagemann, S., Hirschi, M., Kerr, Y.H., Lovergine, F., Mahecha, M.D., Marzahn, P., Mattia, F., Musial, J.P., Preuschmann, S., Reichle, R.H., Satalino, G., Silgram, M., van Bodegom, P.M., Verhoest, N.E.C., Wagner, W., Walker, J.P., Wegmüller, U., & Loew, A. (2021). A roadmap for high-resolution satellite soil moisture applications – confronting product characteristics with user requirements. <em>Remote Sensing of Environment</em>, 252, 112162</p>

2021 ◽  
Vol 264 ◽  
pp. 112610
Author(s):  
Jian Peng ◽  
Maliko Tanguy ◽  
Emma L. Robinson ◽  
Ewan Pinnington ◽  
Jonathan Evans ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1310
Author(s):  
Gabriele Bitelli ◽  
Emanuele Mandanici

The exponential growth in the volume of Earth observation data and the increasing quality and availability of high-resolution imagery are increasingly making more applications possible in urban environments [...]


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Abhishek V. Potnis ◽  
Surya S. Durbha ◽  
Rajat C. Shinde

Earth Observation data possess tremendous potential in understanding the dynamics of our planet. We propose the Semantics-driven Remote Sensing Scene Understanding (Sem-RSSU) framework for rendering comprehensive grounded spatio-contextual scene descriptions for enhanced situational awareness. To minimize the semantic gap for remote-sensing-scene understanding, the framework puts forward the transformation of scenes by using semantic-web technologies to Remote Sensing Scene Knowledge Graphs (RSS-KGs). The knowledge-graph representation of scenes has been formalized through the development of a Remote Sensing Scene Ontology (RSSO)—a core ontology for an inclusive remote-sensing-scene data product. The RSS-KGs are enriched both spatially and contextually, using a deductive reasoner, by mining for implicit spatio-contextual relationships between land-cover classes in the scenes. The Sem-RSSU, at its core, constitutes novel Ontology-driven Spatio-Contextual Triple Aggregation and realization algorithms to transform KGs to render grounded natural language scene descriptions. Considering the significance of scene understanding for informed decision-making from remote sensing scenes during a flood, we selected it as a test scenario, to demonstrate the utility of this framework. In that regard, a contextual domain knowledge encompassing Flood Scene Ontology (FSO) has been developed. Extensive experimental evaluations show promising results, further validating the efficacy of this framework.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 680
Author(s):  
Lei Wang ◽  
Wen Zhuo ◽  
Zhifang Pei ◽  
Xingyuan Tong ◽  
Wei Han ◽  
...  

Massive desert locust swarms have been threatening and devouring natural vegetation and agricultural crops in East Africa and West Asia since 2019, and the event developed into a rare and globally concerning locust upsurge in early 2020. The breeding, maturation, concentration and migration of locusts rely on appropriate environmental factors, mainly precipitation, temperature, vegetation coverage and land-surface soil moisture. Remotely sensed images and long-term meteorological observations across the desert locust invasion area were analyzed to explore the complex drivers, vegetation losses and growing trends during the locust upsurge in this study. The results revealed that (1) the intense precipitation events in the Arabian Peninsula during 2018 provided suitable soil moisture and lush vegetation, thus promoting locust breeding, multiplication and gregarization; (2) the regions affected by the heavy rainfall in 2019 shifted from the Arabian Peninsula to West Asia and Northeast Africa, thus driving the vast locust swarms migrating into those regions and causing enormous vegetation loss; (3) the soil moisture and NDVI anomalies corresponded well with the locust swarm movements; and (4) there was a low chance the eastwardly migrating locust swarms would fly into the Indochina Peninsula and Southwest China.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien-Georgiana Stefan ◽  
Maria-José Escorihuela ◽  
Pere Quintana-Seguí

<h3>Agriculture is an important factor on water resources, given the constant population growth and the strong relationship between water availability and food production. In this context, root zone soil moisture (RZSM) measurements are used by modern irrigators in order to detect the onset of crop water stress and to trigger irrigations. Unfortunately, in situ RZSM measurements are costly; combined with the fact they are available only over small areas and that they might not be representative at the field scale, remote sensing is a cost-effective approach for mapping and monitoring extended areas. A recursive formulation of an exponential filter was used in order to derive 1 km resolution RZSM estimates from SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) surface soil moisture (SSM) over the Ebro basin. The SMAP SSM was disaggregated to a 1 km resolution by using the DISPATCH (DISaggregation based on a Physical And Theoretical scale CHange) algorithm. The pseudodiffusivity parameter of the exponential filter was calibrated per land cover type, by using ISBA-DIF (Interaction Soil Biosphere Atmosphere) surface and root zone soil moisture data as an intermediary step. The daily 1 km RZSM estimates were then used to derive 1 km drought indices such as soil moisture anomalies and soil moisture deficit indices (SMDI), on a weekly time-scale, covering the entire 2020 year. Results show that both drought indices are able to capture rainfall and drying events, with the weekly anomaly being more responsive to sudden events such as heavy rainfalls, while the SMDI is slower to react do the inherent inertia it has. Moreover, a quantitative comparison with drought indices derived from a model-based RZSM estimates has also been performed, with results showing a strong correspondence between the different indices. For comparison purposes, the weekly soil moisture anomalies and SMDI derived using 1 km SMAP-derived SSM were also estimated. The analysis shows that the anomalies and SMDI based on the RZSM are more representative of the hydric stress level of the plants, given that the RZSM is better suited than the SSM to describe the moisture conditions at the deeper layers, which are the ones used by plants during growth and development.</h3><h3>The study provides an insight into obtaining robust, high-resolution remote-sensing derived drought indices based on remote-sensing derived RZSM estimates. The 1 km resolution proves an improvement from other currently available drought indices, such as the European Drought Observatory’s 5 km resolution drought index, which is not able to capture as well the spatial variability present within heterogeneous areas. Moreover, the SSM-derived drought indices are currently used in a drought observatory project, covering a region in the Tarragona province of Catalonia, Spain. The project aims at offering irrigation recommendations to water agencies, and the introduction of RZSM-derived drought indices will further improve such advice.</h3>


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Estoque

The formulation of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) was a major leap forward in humankind’s quest for a sustainable future, which likely began in the 17th century, when declining forest resources in Europe led to proposals for the re-establishment and conservation of forests, a strategy that embodies the great idea that the current generation bears responsibility for future generations. Global progress toward SDG fulfillment is monitored by 231 unique social-ecological indicators spread across 169 targets, and remote sensing (RS) provides Earth observation data, directly or indirectly, for 30 (18%) of these indicators. Unfortunately, the UN Global Sustainable Development Report 2019—The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development concluded that, despite initial efforts, the world is not yet on track for achieving most of the SDG targets. Meanwhile, through the EO4SDG initiative by the Group on Earth Observations, the full potential of RS for SDG monitoring is now being explored at a global scale. As of April 2020, preliminary statistical data were available for 21 (70%) of the 30 RS-based SDG indicators, according to the Global SDG Indicators Database. Ten (33%) of the RS-based SDG indicators have also been included in the SDG Index and Dashboards found in the Sustainable Development Report 2019—Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. These statistics, however, do not necessarily reflect the actual status and availability of raw and processed geospatial data for the RS-based indicators, which remains an important issue. Nevertheless, various initiatives have been started to address the need for open access data. RS data can also help in the development of other potentially relevant complementary indicators or sub-indicators. By doing so, they can help meet one of the current challenges of SDG monitoring, which is how best to operationalize the SDG indicators.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document