Engineering topics

deJeu, R.

Publications and source records attributed to deJeu, R..

2 records

NASA NTRS1999

Estimates of Long Term Surface Soil Moisture in the Midwestern U.S. Derived from Satellite Microwave Observations

Soil moisture is a key component of the water and energy balances of the Earth's surface, and has been identified as a parameter of significant potential for improving the accuracy of large-scale land surface-atmosphere interaction models. However, soil moisture is often somewhat difficult to measure accurately in both space and time, especially at large spatial scales. Soil moisture is highly variable, and while point measurements are typically quite accurate, subsequent areal averaging of these measurements often leads to large errors. Since remotely sensed land surface observations are already a spatially averaged or areally integrated value, they are a logical input parameter to regional or larger scale land process models. A database of long-term soil moisture was compared to satellite microwave observations over test sites in the Midwestern United States. Ground measurements of average volumetric surface soil moisture in the top ten cm were made bimonthly at 19 locations throughout the state of Illinois. Nighttime microwave brightness temperatures were observed at a frequency of 6.6 GHz, by the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), onboard the Nimbus 7 satellite. The life of the SMMR instrument spanned from Nov. 1978 to Aug. 1987. At 6.6 GHz, the instrument provided a spatial resolution of approximately 150 km, and a temporal frequency over the test area of about 3 nighttime orbits per week. Vegetation radiative transfer characteristics, such as the canopy transmissivity, were estimated from vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the 37 GHz Microwave Polarization Difference Index (MPDI). Because the time of satellite coverage does not always coincide with the ground measurements of soil moisture, the existing ground data were used to calibrate a water balance for the top IO cm surface layer in order to interpolate daily surface moisture values. Such a climate-based approach is often more appropriate for estimating large-area average soil moisture because meteorological data are generally more spatially representative than isolated point measurements of soil moisture, Passive microwave remote sensing presents the greatest potential for providing regular spatially representative estimates of surface soil moisture at global scales. Real time estimates should improve weather and climate modelling efforts, while the development of historical data sets will provide necessary information for simulation and validation of long-term climate and global change studies.

Owe, M.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Estimating Soil Moisture from Satellite Microwave Observations

Cooperative research in microwave remote sensing between the Hydrological Sciences Branch of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Earth Sciences Faculty of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam began with the Botswana Water and Energy Balance Experiment and has continued through a series of highly successful International Research Programs. The collaboration between these two research institutions has resulted in significant scientific achievements, most notably in the area of satellite-based microwave remote sensing of soil moisture. The Botswana Program was the first joint research initiative between these two institutions, and provided a unique data base which included historical data sets of Scanning Multifrequency Microwave Radiometer (SN4NM) data, climate information, and extensive soil moisture measurements over several large experimental sites in southeast Botswana. These data were the basis for the development of new approaches in physically-based inverse modelling of soil moisture from satellite microwave observations. Among the results from this study were quantitative estimates of vegetation transmission properties at microwave frequencies. A single polarization modelling approach which used horizontally polarized microwave observations combined with monthly composites of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was developed, and yielded good results. After more precise field experimentation with a ground-based radiometer system, a dual-polarization approach was subsequently developed. This new approach realized significant improvements in soil moisture estimation by satellite. Results from the Botswana study were subsequently applied to a desertification monitoring study for the country of Spain within the framework of the European Community science research programs EFEDA and RESMEDES. A dual frequency approach with only microwave data was used for this application. The Microwave Polarization Difference Index (MPDI) was calculated from 37 GHz data and used to derive the one-way canopy transmissivity. Using a simple radiative transfer model, this information was combined with horizontally polarized 6.6 GHz SMMR observations to derive a 9-year time series of soil moisture for all of Spain at a one quarter degree spatial scale. Both day and night SMMR observations were used independently, in order to check the consistency of the results. A first order Fourier Transform was performed on the mean monthly soil moisture values to identify major characteristics of time series such as trend, amplitude, and phase shift.

Owe, M.↗