1. Introduction
Soil moisture (
SM) is a significant variable for understanding the hydrological cycle, agriculture, weather forecasting, and water management. Dry soil often provides favorable conditions for natural disasters such as wildfires and desertification [
1,
2,
3], whereas wet soil information can be utilized for detecting floods or abnormal overflow of rivers.
SM regulates the Earth’s thermal energy balance through interactions between the soil and the atmosphere [
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9].
SM is also considered a fundamental parameter in climate change studies and atmospheric circulation [
9,
10,
11].
Although providing point measurements within limited regions, ground observations are the most accurate and commonly used to obtain land variable data such as
SM. Satellite remote sensing presents the advantage of providing global
SM observations including for regions lacking ground measurements. Thus, satellites equipped with the visible (VIS), infrared (IR), and microwave (MW) sensors have been mainly used to obtain SM information through remote sensing [
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18]. MW radiation tends to be well absorbed by water particles [
19,
20,
21,
22,
23]. Thus, MW satellites have been mainly used for soil monitoring (depths of 0–10 cm) [
24,
25,
26,
27] with coarse temporal and spatial resolutions. However, SM products using MW satellites, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) and European Space Agency’s (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS), have not shown good performance in the Korean Peninsula, where forested mountains cover 70% of the region. Recently, geostationary satellites using VIS and IR sensors with high temporal and spatial resolution have been used for
SM research [
28,
29,
30,
31,
32]. VIS/IR satellite remote sensing adopts indirect methods such as using the temperature vegetation dryness index (
TVDI) based on the land surface temperature (
LST) and the normalized difference vegetation index (
NDVI) [
33,
34,
35], because VIS and IR sensors cannot directly observe SM.
The Geo-Kompsat-2A (GK-2A) satellite is a geostationary weather satellite developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and National Meteorological Satellite Center (NMSC) of the Korea Meteorological Agency (KMA). It was launched on 5 December 2018, and it began operating on 25 July 2019. As a successor of the Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite (COMS), it has an advanced meteorological imager (AMI) sensor with 16 bands [
36]. GK-2A/AMI level (L) 1B products with a spatial resolution of 0.5–2 km and a temporal resolution of 10 min provide near real-time observations. The NMSC/KMA has developed various L2 and L3 products such as
LST and
NDVI using GK-2A/AMI L1B products [
37,
38] through a five-year research project for increasing the diversification of the AMI’s 16 channels. This study presents one GK-2A L3 product and SM products of GK-2A/AMI as part of the GK-2A/AMI algorithm development research project.
Physically, SM is particularly affected by
LST and vegetation. For example, the
NDVI value remains approximately constant because of the delayed response to
SM, whereas
LST changes immediately in response to water stress [
39]. Additionally, the interaction between
NDVI and
LST determines the thermal capacity of the soil [
34,
39,
40,
41,
42,
43,
44,
45,
46]. The relationship between
NDVI and
LST has been studied for a variety of meteorological variables such as evapotranspiration and air temperature [
47,
48,
49]. The properties of slopes of the
NDVI and
LST relationships have been used in SM studies [
39,
43,
50,
51,
52].
TVDI is an index developed to empirically interpret the water stress associated with surface temperature and vegetation within the
NDVI/
LST space [
33,
40,
42]; this representative method uses slopes of
NDVI and
LST relationships. Recently, many studies have focused on the TVDI-based
SM retrieval algorithm using VIS/IR bands because of their high spatial resolutions. The satellite-based
TVDI was correlated negatively with ground-based
SM observations [
53]. Moran et al. [
42] analyzed the relationship between the soil–vegetation–atmosphere transfer (SVAT) model and
TVDI, and presented the concept of a water deficit index (WDI) related to the actual or potential evapotranspiration rate of surfaces, which describes how
SM can be reproduced from the partial vegetation cover of
NDVI/
LST spaces using the SVAT models. Moran et al. [
54] validated the
NDVI/
LST method through simulations. Areas with sparse canopy may be less related to SM than are moist surfaces as the satellite-derived surface temperature is affected by vegetation and soil surfaces [
55].
This study presents the GK-2A SM retrieval algorithm using
TVDI and GK-2A/AMI products. The GK-2A SM was estimated using the conversion relationships between the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS)
SM and
TVDI calculated using the GK-2A
LST and
NDVI products for various land cover types [
30,
56,
57] in the daily full disk area of the GK-2A, because the use of GLDAS SM was a KMA requirement for
SM algorithm development and validation. The GK-2A SM was temporally and spatially compared with the GLDAS SM for different periods. In addition, this study confirmed the dependence of
TVDI characteristics on land cover type.
5. Discussion
In this study, the conversion coefficients between
TVDI and
SM were obtained for each land cover. Previous
TVDI studies indicated that
TVDI was negatively correlated with the model and ground observations of
SM. However, this study determined the existence of positive as well as negative correlations between
TVDI and
SM based on satellite observations and GLDAS SM data.
TVDI variations in dry regions and periods increased due to the slope of
, a function of
NDVI and
LST, which can undergo drastic changes [
55].
Figure 13 shows the scatterplots with negative (
Figure 13a,c) and positive slopes (
Figure 13b,d) between
TVDI and the
SM for different land cover types from August 2019 to July 2020 in the full disk of the GK-2A. The results in
Figure 13a,c showed agreement with previous studies [
53,
55], but
Figure 13b,d indicated differing results. In terms of data frequency, different land cover types showed similar data pixels in the northern hemisphere, as shown in
Figure 13a,b. However, data frequencies in the southern hemisphere were concentrated in small areas with high
TVDI and low SM values in the
TVDI and
SM space, as shown in
Figure 13c,d. These results indicate the simple land types such as dry regions in most parts of Australia.
Figure 14 shows the positively correlated data distribution between
TVDI and
SM (
Figure 13) represented in the
NDVI/
LST space. In
Figure 14, the green line shows wet soil regions with high vegetation, high
LST, and high
TVDI values. The red line indicates dry soil regions with low vegetation, low
LST, and high
TVDI values. The regions with high vegetation density and high LST values were related to wet soil due to a high vegetation canopy. Thus, high
TVDI values can be calculated based on the high
LST value in this region. The regions with low vegetation density and low
LST were related to dry soil due to a low vegetation canopy. However, high
TVDI can be calculated based on the low
LST value in this region.
The quality of microwave satellite-based SM values such as SMAP and SMOS is insufficient for surface conditions that include mountainous terrain and dense vegetation with high vegetation water content (VWC) [
66] because of the dependence on the radiative transfer model; sensitivity of polarization to the surface
SM; various and a priori ancillary data including physical temperature, vegetation, roughness, and soil texture [
21]; or a relation between
SM and VWC [
12]. In particular, it is difficult to directly measure the VWC, while
NDVI has a high sensitivity to abrupt environmental change, such as floods and droughts, without a priori information [
67]. Thus, this study, based on the
TVDI as a function of
NDVI and
LST, showed feasible results for the vegetated and mountainous topology in the Korean Peninsula in addition to providing SM information, including regions lacking ground measurements and SMAP and SMOS SM values, and supplementing low spatial and temporal resolutions of GLDAS SM in the Korean Peninsula.
6. Summary and Conclusions
This study presented the GK-2A SM algorithm using TVDI as a function of GK-2A LST and NDVI products. GLDAS SM data were used for GK-2A SM algorithm development and validation as a requirement of the KMA. We obtained the daily LST, NDVI, TVDI, and GLDAS SM data and then composited 10-day-averaged LST, NDVI, TVDI, and SM data for various land types. The conversion coefficients between TVDI and GLDAS SM for different land types were obtained and validated with GLDAS SM for different periods from August 2019 to July 2020. The results showed a high CC of >0.75 in East Asia and >0.5 in Australia for all seasons, low bias from −0.001 to 0.001 , and low RMSE of <0.05 . Notably, the RMSE results showed a low error rate of 0.05 or less, which is close to the NASA’s accuracy requirement for SM products for the SMAP mission. The GK-2A SM values were accurate except those for summer in Australia. The slope of , a function of NDVI and LST, can show drastic changes. Our results presented this characteristic in the drier southern hemisphere but not in the northern hemisphere. We also identified and explained the positive correlation between TVDI and SM due to the high sensitivity of TVDI to LST. Our GK-2A SM algorithm has an advantage of better spatial and temporal resolutions compared to those of the other algorithms implemented in geostationary weather satellites. It allows for the monitoring of more spatial structures that would not be identified by GLDAS, captures extreme events where the SM content can change very quickly, and shows an accuracy similar to that of SM products of polar-orbiting microwave satellites. However, the algorithm is dependent on the accuracy of GK-2A LST and NDVI products. The KMA is currently operating the proposed SM retrieval algorithm. A future scope of study will be to improve the conversion coefficients between TVDI and SM in our algorithm using the long-term GK-2A observational data.