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Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture
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Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2020) | Viewed by 77900

Printed Edition Available!
A printed edition of this Special Issue is available here.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Marion Pause

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Geoinformation and Surveying, Department of Architecture, Facility Management and Geoinformation, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Bauhausstrasse 8 (Building 07), 06846 Dessau, Germany
Interests: multi-sensor remote sensing; hyperspectral remote sensing; thermal remote sensing; soil moisture remote sensing; environmental monitoring; in situ/remote sensing integration; remote sensing higher education
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Thomas Wöhling

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology, Faculty of Environmental Science, Technical University of Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
Interests: hydrological modelling; evaluation and optimisation of monitoring networks; inverse modelling; model calibration
Prof. Dr. Karsten Schulz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Water Management, Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering (IWHW), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Muthgasse 18, 1190 Vienna, Austria
Interests: catchment hydrology; remote sensing; uncertainty estimation; soil-plant-atmosphere interactions; hydrological modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Thomas Jagdhuber

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
German Aerospace Center, Microwaves and Radar Institute, Münchener Strasse 20, 82234 Wessling, Germany
Interests: multisensor data integration; data-to-model assimilation; surface and subsurface hydrology; active and passive remote sensing; radiometer; SAR; LiDAR; radiative transfer; polarimetry; parameter extraction; Earth system; soil; root zone; vegetation; plant ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Martin Schrön

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Computational Hydrosystems, Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
Interests: physics; environmental science; cosmic rays; neutron radiation; hydrology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Land surface soil moisture conditions play a key role in controlling the water and energy cycle at the land surface. Soil moisture conditions strongly influence the partitioning of precipitation into surface runoff, infiltration and evapotranspiration and allows the partitioning of net radiation into ground, sensible, and latent heat fluxes. The availability of water also controls plant photosynthesis and thereby agricultural productivity, as well as carbon exchange processes between the land surface and the atmosphere. Therefore, soil moisture monitoring is important to obtain reliable information about the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of land surface water content.

The demand for soil moisture observations to run hydrological simulation models and assess regional water scarcity is increasing at the regional management scale.

About 20 years of experience from remote sensing based research for soil moisture retrieval is available and recent advances in data science and web services path the way for innovations. Novel developments on in-situ sensor technologies and terrestrial monitoring networks provide an essential point-based component for satellite based product validation. In turn, this may be fundamental for innovations of satellite remote sensing based soil moisture retrieval approaches.

The aim of this Special Issue is to present novel approaches, case studies and review discussions of remote sensing based surface soil moisture retrieval at or transferable to the regional scale.

Contributions combining multi-sensor remote sensing observations, in-situ measurements and geographical data from multiple thematic scales to quantify spatial and temporal change pattern are also among our priorities.

Contributions include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Advances in remote sensing techniques to provide (time series of) spatially distributed soil moisture data
  • Recently available and near future satellite data products
  • Airborne cal/val experiments to present future potential innovations
  • Case studies at regional scale
  • Approaches for remote sensing/in-situ observation integration
  • Studies using data assimilation, e.g., into hydrological models, plant growth models or discussing concepts

Dr. Marion Pause
Dr. Thomas Wöhling
Prof. Dr. Karsten Schulz
Dr. Thomas Jagdhuber
Dr. Martin Schrön
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Remote sensing
  • Soil moisture
  • Hydrological modelling
  • Water scarcity
  • Regional scale
  • Microwave remote sensing
  • Optical remote sensing
  • Thermal remote sensing
  • Multi-sensor approach
  • Environmental monitoring

Published Papers (18 papers)

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25 pages, 15156 KiB  
Article
Improving Soil Moisture Estimation by Identification of NDVI Thresholds Optimization: An Application to the Chinese Loess Plateau
by Lina Yuan, Long Li, Ting Zhang, Longqian Chen, Jianlin Zhao, Weiqiang Liu, Liang Cheng, Sai Hu, Longhua Yang and Mingxin Wen
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(4), 589; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040589 - 07 Feb 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2471
Abstract
Accuracy soil moisture estimation at a relevant spatiotemporal scale is scarce but beneficial for understanding ecohydrological processes and improving weather forecasting and climate models, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions like the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). This study proposed Criterion 2, a new [...] Read more.
Accuracy soil moisture estimation at a relevant spatiotemporal scale is scarce but beneficial for understanding ecohydrological processes and improving weather forecasting and climate models, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions like the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). This study proposed Criterion 2, a new method to improve relative soil moisture (RSM) estimation by identification of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) thresholds optimization based on our previously proposed iteration procedure of Criterion 1. Apparent thermal inertia (ATI) and temperature vegetation dryness index (TVDI) were applied to subregional RSM retrieval for the CLP throughout 2017. Three optimal NDVI thresholds (NDVI0 was used for computing TVDI, and both NDVIATI and NDVITVDI for dividing the entire CLP) were firstly identified with the best validation results (R¯) of subregions for 8-day periods. Then, we compared the selected optimal NDVI thresholds and estimated RSM with each criterion. Results show that NDVI thresholds were optimized to robust RSM estimation with Criterion 2, which characterized RSM variability better. The estimated RSM with Criterion 2 showed increased accuracy (maximum R¯ of 0.82 ± 0.007 for Criterion 2 and of 0.75 ± 0.008 for Criterion 1) and spatiotemporal coverage (45 and 38 periods (8-day) of RSM maps and the total RSM area of 939.52 × 104 km2 and 667.44 × 104 km2 with Criterion 2 and Criterion 1, respectively) than with Criterion 1. Moreover, the additional NDVI thresholds we applied was another strategy to acquire wider coverage of RSM estimation. The improved RSM estimation with Criterion 2 could provide a basis for forecasting drought and precision irrigation management. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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21 pages, 6519 KiB  
Article
Spatial Distribution of Soil Moisture in Mongolia Using SMAP and MODIS Satellite Data: A Time Series Model (2010–2025)
by Enkhjargal Natsagdorj, Tsolmon Renchin, Philippe De Maeyer and Bayanjargal Darkhijav
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(3), 347; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13030347 - 20 Jan 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3706
Abstract
Soil moisture is one of the essential variables of the water cycle, and plays a vital role in agriculture, water management, and land (drought) and vegetation cover change as well as climate change studies. The spatial distribution of soil moisture with high-resolution images [...] Read more.
Soil moisture is one of the essential variables of the water cycle, and plays a vital role in agriculture, water management, and land (drought) and vegetation cover change as well as climate change studies. The spatial distribution of soil moisture with high-resolution images in Mongolia has long been one of the essential issues in the remote sensing and agricultural community. In this research, we focused on the distribution of soil moisture and compared the monthly precipitation/temperature and crop yield from 2010 to 2020. In the present study, Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data were used, including the MOD13A2 Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), MOD11A2 Land Surface Temperature (LST), and precipitation/temperature monthly data from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) from 2010 to 2020 over Mongolia. Multiple linear regression methods have previously been used for soil moisture estimation, and in this study, the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Arima (ARIMA) model was used for soil moisture forecasting. The results show that the correlation was statistically significant between SM-MOD and soil moisture content (SMC) from the meteorological stations at different depths (p < 0.0001 at 0–20 cm and p < 0.005 at 0–50 cm). The correlation between SM-MOD and temperature, as represented by the correlation coefficient (r), was 0.80 and considered statistically significant (p < 0.0001). However, when SM-MOD was compared with the crop yield for each year (2010–2019), the correlation coefficient (r) was 0.84. The ARIMA (12, 1, 12) model was selected for the soil moisture time series analysis when predicting soil moisture from 2020 to 2025. The forecasting results are shown for the 95 percent confidence interval. The soil moisture estimation approach and model in our study can serve as a valuable tool for confident and convenient observations of agricultural drought for decision-makers and farmers in Mongolia. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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21 pages, 7450 KiB  
Article
Soil Moisture Retrievals by Combining Passive Microwave and Optical Data
by Cheng Tong, Hongquan Wang, Ramata Magagi, Kalifa Goïta, Luyao Zhu, Mengying Yang and Jinsong Deng
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(19), 3173; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12193173 - 28 Sep 2020
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3409
Abstract
This paper aims to retrieve the temporal dynamics of soil moisture from 2015 to 2019 over an agricultural site in Southeast Australia using the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) brightness temperature. To meet this objective, two machine learning approaches, Random Forest (RF), Support [...] Read more.
This paper aims to retrieve the temporal dynamics of soil moisture from 2015 to 2019 over an agricultural site in Southeast Australia using the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) brightness temperature. To meet this objective, two machine learning approaches, Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), as well as a statistical Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model were established, with the auxiliary data including the 16-day composite MODIS NDVI (MOD13Q1) and Surface Temperature (ST). The entire data were divided into two parts corresponding to ascending (6:00 p.m. local time) and descending (6:00 a.m. local time) orbits of SMAP overpasses. Thus, the three models were trained using the descending data acquired during the five years (2015 to 2019), and validated using the ascending product of the same period. Consequently, three different temporal variations of the soil moisture were obtained based on the three models. To evaluate their accuracies, the retrieved soil moisture was compared against the SMAP level-2 soil moisture product, as well as to in-situ ground station data. The comparative results show that the soil moisture obtained using the OLS, RF and SVM algorithms are highly correlated to the SMAP level-2 product, with high coefficients of determination (R2OLS = 0.981, R2SVM = 0.943, R2RF = 0.983) and low RMSE (RMSEOLS = 0.016 cm3/cm3, RMSESVM = 0.047 cm3/cm3, RMSERF = 0.016 cm3/cm3). Meanwhile, the estimated soil moistures agree with in-situ station data across different years (R2OLS = 0.376~0.85, R2SVM = 0.376~0.814, R2RF = 0.39~0.854; RMSEOLS = 0.049~0.105 cm3/cm3, RMSESVM = 0.073~0.1 cm3/cm3, RMSERF = 0.047~0.102 cm3/cm3), but an overestimation issue is observed for high vegetation conditions. The RF algorithm outperformed the SVM and OLS, in terms of the agreement with the ground measurements. This study suggests an alternative soil moisture retrieval scheme, in complementary to the SMAP baseline algorithm, for a fast soil moisture retrieval. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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26 pages, 3568 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of Different Radiative Transfer Models for Microwave Backscatter Estimation of Wheat Fields
by Thomas Weiß, Thomas Ramsauer, Alexander Löw and Philip Marzahn
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(18), 3037; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12183037 - 17 Sep 2020
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2773
Abstract
This study aimed to analyze existing microwave surface (Oh, Dubois, Water Cloud Model “WCM”, Integral Equation Model “IEM”) and canopy (Water Cloud Model “WCM”, Single Scattering Radiative Transfer “SSRT”) Radiative Transfer (RT) models and assess advantages and disadvantages of different model combinations in [...] Read more.
This study aimed to analyze existing microwave surface (Oh, Dubois, Water Cloud Model “WCM”, Integral Equation Model “IEM”) and canopy (Water Cloud Model “WCM”, Single Scattering Radiative Transfer “SSRT”) Radiative Transfer (RT) models and assess advantages and disadvantages of different model combinations in terms of VV polarized radar backscatter simulation of wheat fields. The models are driven with field measurements acquired in 2017 at a test site near Munich, Germany. As vegetation descriptor for the canopy models Leaf Area Index (LAI) was used. The effect of empirical model parameters is evaluated in two different ways: (a) empirical model parameters are set as static throughout the whole time series of one growing season and (b) empirical model parameters describing the backscatter attenuation by the canopy are treated as non-static in time. The model results are compared to a dense Sentinel-1 C-band time series with observations every 1.5 days. The utilized Sentinel-1 time series comprises images acquired with different satellite acquisition geometries (different incidence and azimuth angles), which allows us to evaluate the model performance for different acquisition geometries. Results show that total LAI as vegetation descriptor in combination with static empirical parameters fit Sentinel-1 radar backscatter of wheat fields only sufficient within the first half of the vegetation period. With the saturation of LAI and/or canopy height of the wheat fields, the observed increase in Sentinel-1 radar backscatter cannot be modeled. Probable cause are effects of changes within the grains (both structure and water content per leaf area) and their influence on the backscatter. However, model results with LAI and non-static empirical parameters fit the Sentinel-1 data well for the entire vegetation period. Limitations regarding different satellite acquisition geometries become apparent for the second half of the vegetation period. The observed overall increase in backscatter can be modeled, but a trend mismatch between modeled and observed backscatter values of adjacent time points with different acquisition geometries is observed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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16 pages, 4073 KiB  
Article
Comparative Analysis of Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, and GF-1 Data for Retrieving Soil Moisture over Wheat Farmlands
by Qi Wang, Jiancheng Li, Taoyong Jin, Xin Chang, Yongchao Zhu, Yunwei Li, Jiaojiao Sun and Dawei Li
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(17), 2708; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12172708 - 21 Aug 2020
Cited by 41 | Viewed by 4998
Abstract
Soil moisture is an important variable in ecological, hydrological, and meteorological studies. An effective method for improving the accuracy of soil moisture retrieval is the mutual supplementation of multi-source data. The sensor configuration and band settings of different optical sensors lead to differences [...] Read more.
Soil moisture is an important variable in ecological, hydrological, and meteorological studies. An effective method for improving the accuracy of soil moisture retrieval is the mutual supplementation of multi-source data. The sensor configuration and band settings of different optical sensors lead to differences in band reflectivity in the inter-data, further resulting in the differences between vegetation indices. The combination of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data with multi-source optical data has been widely used for soil moisture retrieval. However, the influence of vegetation indices derived from different sources of optical data on retrieval accuracy has not been comparatively analyzed thus far. Therefore, the suitability of vegetation parameters derived from different sources of optical data for accurate soil moisture retrieval requires further investigation. In this study, vegetation indices derived from GF-1, Landsat-8, and Sentinel-2 were compared. Based on Sentinel-1 SAR and three optical data, combined with the water cloud model (WCM) and the advanced integral equation model (AIEM), the accuracy of soil moisture retrieval was investigated. The results indicate that, Sentinel-2 data were more sensitive to vegetation characteristics and had a stronger capability for vegetation signal detection. The ranking of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values from the three sensors was as follows: the largest was in Sentinel-2, followed by Landsat-8, and the value of GF-1 was the smallest. The normalized difference water index (NDWI) value of Landsat-8 was larger than that of Sentinel-2. With reference to the relative components in the WCM model, the contribution of vegetation scattering exceeded that of soil scattering within a vegetation index range of approximately 0.55–0.6 in NDVI-based models and all ranges in NDWI1-based models. The threshold value of NDWI2 for calculating vegetation water content (VWC) was approximately an NDVI value of 0.4–0.55. In the soil moisture retrieval, Sentinel-2 data achieved higher accuracy than data from the other sources and thus was more suitable for the study for combination with SAR in soil moisture retrieval. Furthermore, compared with NDVI, higher accuracy of soil moisture could be retrieved by using NDWI1 (R2 = 0.623, RMSE = 4.73%). This study provides a reference for the selection of optical data for combination with SAR in soil moisture retrieval. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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19 pages, 31115 KiB  
Article
Estimation of Soil Moisture Applying Modified Dubois Model to Sentinel-1; A Regional Study from Central India
by Abhilash Singh, Kumar Gaurav, Ganesh Kumar Meena and Shashi Kumar
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(14), 2266; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12142266 - 15 Jul 2020
Cited by 34 | Viewed by 12226
Abstract
Surface soil moisture has a wide application in climate change, agronomy, water resources, and in many other domain of science and engineering. Measurement of soil moisture at high spatial and temporal resolution at regional and global scale is needed for the prediction of [...] Read more.
Surface soil moisture has a wide application in climate change, agronomy, water resources, and in many other domain of science and engineering. Measurement of soil moisture at high spatial and temporal resolution at regional and global scale is needed for the prediction of flood, drought, planning and management of agricultural productivity to ensure food security. Recent advancement in microwave remote sensing, especially after the launch of Sentinel operational satellites has enabled the scientific community to estimate soil moisture at higher spatial and temporal resolution with greater accuracy. This study evaluates the potential of Sentinel-1A satellite images to estimate soil moisture in a semi-arid region. Exactly at the time when satellite passes over the study area, we have collected soil samples at 37 different locations and measured the soil moisture from 5 cm below the ground surface using ML3 theta probe. We processed the soil samples in laboratory to obtain volumetric soil moisture using the oven dry method. We found soil moisture measured from calibrated theta probe and oven dry method are in good agreement with Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) 0.025 m 3 /m 3 and coefficient of determination (R 2 ) 0.85. We then processed Sentinel-1A images and applied modified Dubois model to calculate relative permittivity of the soil from the backscatter values ( σ ∘ ). The volumetric soil moisture at each pixel is then calculated by applying the universal Topp’s model. Finally, we masked the pixels whose Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) value is greater than 0.4 to generate soil moisture map as per the Dubois NDVI criterion. Our modelled soil moisture accord with the measured values with RMSE = 0.035 and R 2 = 0.75. We found a small bias in the modelled soil moisture ( 0.02 m 3 / m 3 ). However, this has reduced significantly ( 0.001 m 3 / m 3 ) after applying a bias correction based on Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) matching. Our approach provides a first-order estimate of soil moisture from Sentinel-1A images in sparsely vegetated agricultural land. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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28 pages, 10171 KiB  
Article
Monitoring Residual Soil Moisture and Its Association to the Long-Term Variability of Rainfall over the Upper Blue Nile Basin in Ethiopia
by Getachew Ayehu, Tsegaye Tadesse and Berhan Gessesse
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(13), 2138; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12132138 - 03 Jul 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2446
Abstract
Monitoring soil moisture and its association with rainfall variability is important to comprehend the hydrological processes and to set proper agricultural water use management to maximize crop growth and productivity. In this study, the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) soil [...] Read more.
Monitoring soil moisture and its association with rainfall variability is important to comprehend the hydrological processes and to set proper agricultural water use management to maximize crop growth and productivity. In this study, the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) soil moisture product was applied to assess the dynamics of residual soil moisture in autumn (September to November) and its response to the long-term variability of rainfall in the Upper Blue Nile Basin (UBNB) of Ethiopia from 1992 to 2017. The basin was found to have autumn soil moisture (ASM) ranging from 0.09–0.38 m3/m3, with an average of 0.26 m3/m3. The ASM time series resulted in the coefficient of variation (CV) ranging from 2.8%–28% and classified as low-to-medium variability. In general, the monotonic trend analysis for ASM revealed that the UBNB had experienced a wetting trend for the past 26 years (1992–2017) at a rate of 0.00024 m3/m3 per year. A significant wetting trend ranging from 0.001 to 0.006 m3/m3 per year for the autumn season was found. This trend was mainly showed across the northwest region of the basin and covers about 18% of the total basin area. The spatial patterns and variability of rainfall and ASM were also found to be similar, which implies the strong relationship between rainfall and soil moisture in autumn. The spring and autumn season rainfall explained a considerable portion of ASM in the basin. The analyses also signified that the rainfall amount and distribution impacted by the topography and land cover classes of the basin showed a significant influence on the characteristics of the ASM. Further, the result verified that the behavior of ASM could be controlled by the loss of soil moisture through evapotranspiration and the gain from rainfall, although changes in rainfall were found to be the primary driver of ASM variability over the UBNB. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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30 pages, 5762 KiB  
Article
High-Precision Soil Moisture Mapping Based on Multi-Model Coupling and Background Knowledge, Over Vegetated Areas Using Chinese GF-3 and GF-1 Satellite Data
by Leran Han, Chunmei Wang, Tao Yu, Xingfa Gu and Qiyue Liu
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(13), 2123; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12132123 - 02 Jul 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2609
Abstract
This paper proposes a combined approach comprising a set of methods for the high-precision mapping of soil moisture in a study area located in Jiangsu Province of China, based on the Chinese C-band synthetic aperture radar data of GF-3 and high spatial-resolution optical [...] Read more.
This paper proposes a combined approach comprising a set of methods for the high-precision mapping of soil moisture in a study area located in Jiangsu Province of China, based on the Chinese C-band synthetic aperture radar data of GF-3 and high spatial-resolution optical data of GF-1, in situ experimental datasets and background knowledge. The study was conducted in three stages: First, in the process of eliminating the effect of vegetation canopy, an empirical vegetation water content model and a water cloud model with localized parameters were developed to obtain the bare soil backscattering coefficient. Second, four commonly used models (advanced integral equation model (AIEM), look-up table (LUT) method, Oh model, and the Dubois model) were coupled to acquire nine soil moisture retrieval maps and algorithms. Finally, a simple and effective optimal solution method was proposed to select and combine the nine algorithms based on classification strategies devised using three types of background knowledge. A comprehensive evaluation was carried out on each soil moisture map in terms of the root-mean-square-error (RMSE), Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean bias (bias). The results show that for the nine individual algorithms, the estimated model constructed using the AIEM (mv1) was significantly more accurate than those constructed using the other models (RMSE = 0.0321 cm³/cm³, MAE = 0.0260 cm³/cm³, and PCC = 0.9115), followed by the Oh model (m_v5) and LUT inversion method under HH polarization (mv2). Compared with the independent algorithms, the optimal solution methods have significant advantages; the soil moisture map obtained using the classification strategy based on the percentage content of clay was the most satisfactory (RMSE = 0.0271 cm³/cm³, MAE = 0.0225 cm³/cm³, and PCC = 0.9364). This combined method could not only effectively integrate the optical and radar satellite data but also couple a variety of commonly used inversion models, and at the same time, background knowledge was introduced into the optimal solution method. Thus, we provide a new method for the high-precision mapping of soil moisture in areas with a complex underlying surface. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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24 pages, 20106 KiB  
Article
Improving Estimation of Soil Moisture Content Using a Modified Soil Thermal Inertia Model
by Zhenhua Liu, Li Zhao, Yiping Peng, Guangxing Wang and Yueming Hu
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(11), 1719; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12111719 - 27 May 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2616
Abstract
There has been substantial research for estimating and mapping soil moisture content (SMC) of large areas using remotely sensed images by developing models of soil thermal inertia (STI). However, it is still a great challenge to accurately estimate SMC because of the impact [...] Read more.
There has been substantial research for estimating and mapping soil moisture content (SMC) of large areas using remotely sensed images by developing models of soil thermal inertia (STI). However, it is still a great challenge to accurately estimate SMC because of the impact of vegetation canopies and vegetation-induced shadows in mixed pixels on the estimates. In this study, a new method was developed to increase the estimation accuracy of SMC for an irrigated area located in YingKe of Heihe, China, using ASTER data. In the method, an original model of estimating bare STI was modified by decomposing a mixed pixel into three components, bare soil, vegetated soil, and shaded soil, as well as extracting their fractions using a spectral unmixing analysis and then deriving their fluxes. Moreover, the 90 m spatial resolution thermal images were scaled down to the 15 m spatial resolution by data fusion of a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and re-sampling using the nearest neighbor method (NNM). The modified model was compared with the original model based on the mean absolute error (MAE) and relative root mean square error (RRMSE) between the SMC estimates and observations from 30 validation soil samples. The results indicated that compared to the original model based on the parallel dual layer, the modified STI model based on the serial dual layer statistically significantly decreased the MAE and RRMSE of the SMC estimates by 63.0–63.2% and 63.0–63.5%, respectively. The 15 m spatial resolution thermal bands obtained by the DWT data fusion provided more detailed information of SMC but did not significantly improve its estimation accuracy than the 15 m spatial resolution thermal bands by re-sampling using NNM. This implied that the novel method offered insights on how to increase the accuracy of retrieving SMC estimates in vegetated areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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32 pages, 5686 KiB  
Article
New Downscaling Approach Using ESA CCI SM Products for Obtaining High Resolution Surface Soil Moisture
by Jovan Kovačević, Željko Cvijetinović, Nikola Stančić, Nenad Brodić and Dragan Mihajlović
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(7), 1119; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12071119 - 01 Apr 2020
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 3981
Abstract
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 [...] Read more.
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. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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22 pages, 7507 KiB  
Article
Spatial Gap-Filling of ESA CCI Satellite-Derived Soil Moisture Based on Geostatistical Techniques and Multiple Regression
by Ricardo M. Llamas, Mario Guevara, Danny Rorabaugh, Michela Taufer and Rodrigo Vargas
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(4), 665; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12040665 - 18 Feb 2020
Cited by 41 | Viewed by 6870
Abstract
Soil moisture plays a key role in the Earth’s water and carbon cycles, but acquisition of continuous (i.e., gap-free) soil moisture measurements across large regions is a challenging task due to limitations of currently available point measurements. Satellites offer critical information for soil [...] Read more.
Soil moisture plays a key role in the Earth’s water and carbon cycles, but acquisition of continuous (i.e., gap-free) soil moisture measurements across large regions is a challenging task due to limitations of currently available point measurements. Satellites offer critical information for soil moisture over large areas on a regular basis (e.g., European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI), National Aeronautics and Space Administration Soil Moisture Active Passive (NASA SMAP)); however, there are regions where satellite-derived soil moisture cannot be estimated because of certain conditions such as high canopy density, frozen soil, or extremely dry soil. We compared and tested three approaches, ordinary kriging (OK), regression kriging (RK), and generalized linear models (GLMs), to model soil moisture and fill spatial data gaps from the ESA CCI product version 4.5 from January 2000 to September 2012, over a region of 465,777 km2 across the Midwest of the USA. We tested our proposed methods to fill gaps in the original ESA CCI product and two data subsets, removing 25% and 50% of the initially available valid pixels. We found a significant correlation (r = 0.558, RMSE = 0.069 m3m−3) between the original satellite-derived soil moisture product with ground-truth data from the North American Soil Moisture Database (NASMD). Predicted soil moisture using OK also had significant correlation with NASMD data when using 100% (r = 0.579, RMSE = 0.067 m3m−3), 75% (r = 0.575, RMSE = 0.067 m3m−3), and 50% (r = 0.569, RMSE = 0.067 m3m−3) of available valid pixels for each month of the study period. RK showed comparable values to OK when using different percentages of available valid pixels, 100% (r = 0.582, RMSE = 0.067 m3m−3), 75% (r = 0.582, RMSE = 0.067 m3m−3), and 50% (r = 0.571, RMSE = 0.067 m3m−3). GLM had slightly lower correlation with NASMD data (average r = 0.475, RMSE = 0.070 m3m−3) when using the same subsets of available data (i.e., 100%, 75%, 50%). Our results provide support for using geostatistical approaches (OK and RK) as alternative techniques to gap-fill missing spatial values of satellite-derived soil moisture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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22 pages, 5511 KiB  
Article
Improving the AMSR-E/NASA Soil Moisture Data Product Using In-Situ Measurements from the Tibetan Plateau
by Qiuxia Xie, Massimo Menenti and Li Jia
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(23), 2748; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11232748 - 22 Nov 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3005
Abstract
The daily AMSR-E/NASA (the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System/the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) soil moisture (SM) products from 2002 to 2011 at 25 km resolution were developed and distributed by the NASA National Snow [...] Read more.
The daily AMSR-E/NASA (the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System/the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) soil moisture (SM) products from 2002 to 2011 at 25 km resolution were developed and distributed by the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) and JAXA archives, respectively. This study analyzed and evaluated the temporal changes and accuracy of the AMSR-E/NASA SM product and compared it with the AMSR-E/JAXA SM product. The accuracy of both AMSR-E/NASA and JAXA SM was low, with RMSE (root mean square error) > 0.1 cm3 cm−3 against the in-situ SM measurements, especially the AMSR-E/NASA SM. Compared with the AMSR-E/JAXA SM, the dynamic range of AMSR-E/NASA SM is very narrow in many regions and does not reflect the intra- and inter-annual variability of soil moisture. We evaluated both data products by building a linear relationship between the SM and the Microwave Polarization Difference Index (MPDI) to simplify the AMSR-E/NASA SM retrieval algorithm on the basis of the observed relationship between samples extracted from the MPDI and SM data. We obtained the coefficients of this linear relationship (i.e., A0 and A1) using in-situ measurements of SM and brightness temperature (TB) data simulated with the same radiative transfer model applied to develop the AMSR-E/NASA SM algorithm. Finally, the linear relationships between the SM and MPDI were used to retrieve the SM monthly from AMSR-E TB data, and the estimated SM was validated using the in-situ SM measurements in the Naqu area on the Tibetan Plateau of China. We obtained a steeper slope, i.e., A1 = 8, with the in-situ SM measurements against A1 = 1, when using the NASA SM retrievals. The low A1 value is a measure of the low sensitivity of the NASA SM retrievals to MPDI and its narrow dynamic range. These results were confirmed by analyzing a data set collected in Poland. In the case of the Tibetan Plateau, the higher value A1 = 8 gave more accurate monthly AMSR-E SM retrievals with RMSE = 0.065 cm3 cm−3. The dynamic range of the improved retrievals was more consistent with the in-situ SM measurements than with both the AMSR-E/NASA and JAXA SM products in the Naqu area of the Tibetan Plateau in 2011. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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22 pages, 5909 KiB  
Article
Deriving Field Scale Soil Moisture from Satellite Observations and Ground Measurements in a Hilly Agricultural Region
by Luca Zappa, Matthias Forkel, Angelika Xaver and Wouter Dorigo
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(22), 2596; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11222596 - 06 Nov 2019
Cited by 33 | Viewed by 5387
Abstract
Agricultural and hydrological applications could greatly benefit from soil moisture (SM) information at sub-field resolution and (sub-) daily revisit time. However, current operational satellite missions provide soil moisture information at either lower spatial or temporal resolution. Here, we downscale coarse resolution (25–36 km) [...] Read more.
Agricultural and hydrological applications could greatly benefit from soil moisture (SM) information at sub-field resolution and (sub-) daily revisit time. However, current operational satellite missions provide soil moisture information at either lower spatial or temporal resolution. Here, we downscale coarse resolution (25–36 km) satellite SM products with quasi-daily resolution to the field scale (30 m) using the random forest (RF) machine learning algorithm. RF models are trained with remotely sensed SM and ancillary variables on soil texture, topography, and vegetation cover against SM measured in the field. The approach is developed and tested in an agricultural catchment equipped with a high-density network of low-cost SM sensors. Our results show a strong consistency between the downscaled and observed SM spatio-temporal patterns. We found that topography has higher predictive power for downscaling than soil texture, due to the hilly landscape of the study area. Furthermore, including a proxy of vegetation cover results in considerable improvements of the performance. Increasing the training set size leads to significant gain in the model skill and expanding the training set is likely to further enhance the accuracy. When only limited in-situ measurements are available as training data, increasing the number of sensor locations should be favored over expanding the duration of the measurements for improved downscaling performance. In this regard, we show the potential of low-cost sensors as a practical and cost-effective solution for gathering the necessary observations. Overall, our findings highlight the suitability of using ground measurements in conjunction with machine learning to derive high spatially resolved SM maps from coarse-scale satellite products. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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24 pages, 6435 KiB  
Article
A New Retrieval Algorithm for Soil Moisture Index from Thermal Infrared Sensor On-Board Geostationary Satellites over Europe and Africa and Its Validation
by Nicolas Ghilain, Alirio Arboleda, Okke Batelaan, Jonas Ardö, Isabel Trigo, Jose-Miguel Barrios and Francoise Gellens-Meulenberghs
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(17), 1968; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11171968 - 21 Aug 2019
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 4223
Abstract
Monitoring soil moisture at the Earth’surface is of great importance for drought early warnings. Spaceborne remote sensing is a keystone in monitoring at continental scale, as satellites can make observations of locations which are scarcely monitored by ground-based techniques. In recent years, several [...] Read more.
Monitoring soil moisture at the Earth’surface is of great importance for drought early warnings. Spaceborne remote sensing is a keystone in monitoring at continental scale, as satellites can make observations of locations which are scarcely monitored by ground-based techniques. In recent years, several soil moisture products for continental scale monitoring became available from the main space agencies around the world. Making use of sensors aboard polar satellites sampling in the microwave spectrum, soil moisture can be measured and mapped globally every few days at a spatial resolution as fine as 25 km. However, complementarity of satellite observations is a crucial issue to improve the quality of the estimations provided. In this context, measurements within the visible and infrared from geostationary satellites provide information on the surface from a totally different perspective. In this study, we design a new retrieval algorithm for daily soil moisture monitoring based only on the land surface temperature observations derived from the METEOSAT second generation geostationary satellites. Soil moisture has been retrieved from the retrieval algorithm for an eight years period over Europe and Africa at the SEVIRI sensor spatial resolution (3 km at the sub-satellite point). The results, only available for clear sky and partly cloudy conditions, are for the first time extensively evaluated against in-situ observations provided by the International Soil Moisture Network and FLUXNET at sites across Europe and Africa. The soil moisture retrievals have approximately the same accuracy as the soil moisture products derived from microwave sensors, with the most accurate estimations for semi-arid regions of Europe and Africa, and a progressive degradation of the accuracy towards northern latitudes of Europe. Although some possible improvements can be expected by a better use of other products derived from SEVIRI, the new approach developped and assessed here is a valuable alternative to microwave sensors to monitor daily soil moisture at the resolution of few kilometers over entire continents and could reveal a good complementarity to an improved monitoring system, as the algorithm can produce surface soil moisture with less than 1 day delay over clear sky and non-steady cloudy conditions (over 10% of the time). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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23 pages, 2135 KiB  
Article
Stepwise Disaggregation of SMAP Soil Moisture at 100 m Resolution Using Landsat-7/8 Data and a Varying Intermediate Resolution
by Nitu Ojha, Olivier Merlin, Beatriz Molero, Christophe Suere, Luis Olivera-Guerra, Bouchra Ait Hssaine, Abdelhakim Amazirh, Ahmad Al Bitar, Maria Jose Escorihuela and Salah Er-Raki
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(16), 1863; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11161863 - 09 Aug 2019
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 4339
Abstract
Global soil moisture (SM) products are currently available from passive microwave sensors at typically 40 km spatial resolution. Although recent efforts have been made to produce 1 km resolution data from the disaggregation of coarse scale observations, the targeted resolution of available SM [...] Read more.
Global soil moisture (SM) products are currently available from passive microwave sensors at typically 40 km spatial resolution. Although recent efforts have been made to produce 1 km resolution data from the disaggregation of coarse scale observations, the targeted resolution of available SM data is still far from the requirements of fine-scale hydrological and agricultural studies. To fill the gap, a new disaggregation scheme of Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) data is proposed at 100 m resolution by using the disaggregation based on physical and theoretical scale change (DISPATCH) algorithm. The main objectives of this paper is (i) to implement DISPATCH algorithm at 100 m resolution using SMAP SM and Landsat land surface temperature and vegetation index data and (ii) to investigate the usefulness of an intermediate spatial resolution (ISR) between the SMAP 36 km resolution and the targeted 100 m resolution. The sequential disaggregation approach from 36 km to ISR (ranging from 1 km to 30 km) and from ISR to 100 m resolution is evaluated over 22 irrigated field crops in central Morocco using in-situ SM measurements collected from January to May 2016. The lowest root mean square difference (RMSD) between the 100 m resolution disaggregated and in-situ SM is obtained when the ISR is around 10 km. Therefore, the two-step disaggregation is more efficient than the direct disaggregation from SMAP to 100 m resolution. Moreover, we propose a moving average window algorithm to increase the accuracy in the 100 m resolution SM as well as to reduce the low-resolution boxy artifacts on disaggregated images. The correlation coefficient between 100 m resolution disaggregated and in situ SM ranges between 0.5–0.9 for four out of the six extensive sampling dates. This methodology relies solely on remote sensing data and can be easily implemented to monitor SM at a high spatial resolution over irrigated regions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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26 pages, 6708 KiB  
Article
Evaluation and Analysis of AMSR2 and FY3B Soil Moisture Products by an In Situ Network in Cropland on Pixel Scale in the Northeast of China
by Haoyang Fu, Tingting Zhou and Chenglin Sun
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(7), 868; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11070868 - 10 Apr 2019
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3661
Abstract
An in situ soil moisture observation network at pixel scale is constructed in cropland in the northeast of China for accurate regional soil moisture evaluations of satellite products. The soil moisture products are based on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) algorithm and [...] Read more.
An in situ soil moisture observation network at pixel scale is constructed in cropland in the northeast of China for accurate regional soil moisture evaluations of satellite products. The soil moisture products are based on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) algorithm and the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM) from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), and the products from the FengYun-3B (FY3B) satellite are evaluated using synchronous in situ data collected by the EC-5 sensors at the surface in a typical cropland in the northeast of China during the crop-growing season from May to September 2017. The results show that the JAXA product provides an underestimation with a bias (b) of -0.094 cm3/cm3, and the LPRM soil moisture product generates an overestimation with a b of 0.156 cm3/cm3. However the LPRM product shows a better correlation with the in situ data, especially in the early experimental period when the correlation coefficient is 0.654, which means only the JAXA product in the early stage, with an unbiased root mean square error (ubRMSE) of 0.049 cm3/cm3 and a b of -0.043 cm3/cm3, reaches the goal accuracy (±0.05 cm3/cm3). The FY3B has consistently obtained microwave brightness temperature data, but its soil moisture product data in the study area is seriously missing during most of the experimental period. However, it recovers in the later period and is closer to the in situ data than the JAXA and LPRM products. The three products show totally different trends with vegetation cover, soil temperature, and actual soil moisture itself in different time periods. The LPRM product is more sensitive and correlated with the in situ data, and is less susceptible to interferences. The JAXA is numerically closer to the in situ data, but the results are still affected by temperature. Both will decrease in accuracy as the actual soil moisture increases. The FY3B seems to perform better at the end of the whole period after data recovery. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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13 pages, 2041 KiB  
Letter
Regionalization of Coarse Scale Soil Moisture Products Using Fine-Scale Vegetation Indices—Prospects and Case Study
by Mengyu Liang, Marion Pause, Nikolas Prechtel and Matthias Schramm
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(3), 551; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12030551 - 07 Feb 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2732
Abstract
Surface soil moisture (SSM) plays a critical role in many hydrological, biological and biogeochemical processes. It is relevant to farmers, scientists, and policymakers for making effective land management decisions. However, coarse spatial resolution and complex interactions of microwave radiation with surface roughness and [...] Read more.
Surface soil moisture (SSM) plays a critical role in many hydrological, biological and biogeochemical processes. It is relevant to farmers, scientists, and policymakers for making effective land management decisions. However, coarse spatial resolution and complex interactions of microwave radiation with surface roughness and vegetation structure present limitations within active remote sensing products to directly monitor soil moisture variations with sufficient detail. This paper discusses a strategy to use vegetation indices (VI) such as greenness, water stress, coverage, vigor, and growth dynamics, derived from Earth Observation (EO) data for an indirect characterization of SSM conditions. In this regional-scale study of a wetland environment, correlations between the coarse Advanced SCATterometer-Soil Water Index (ASCAT-SWI or SWI) product and statistical measurements of four vegetation indices from higher resolution Sentinel-2 data were analyzed. The results indicate that the mean value of Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) correlates most strongly to the SWI and that the wet season vegetation traits show stronger linear relation to the SWI than during the dry season. The correlation between VIs and SWI was found to be independent of the underlying dominant vegetation classes which are not derived in real-time. Therefore, fine-scale vegetation information from optical satellite data convey the spatial heterogeneity missed by coarse synthetic aperture radar (SAR)-derived SSM products and is linked to the SSM condition underneath for regionalization purposes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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17 pages, 2153 KiB  
Technical Note
Development of a Multimode Field Deployable Lidar Instrument for Topographic Measurements of Unsaturated Soil Properties: Instrument Description
by Sean E. Salazar, Cyrus D. Garner and Richard A. Coffman
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(3), 289; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11030289 - 01 Feb 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4627
Abstract
The hydrological and mechanical behavior of soil is determined by the moisture content, soil water (matric) potential, fines content, and plasticity. However, these parameters are often difficult or impractical to determine in the field. Remote characterization of soil parameters is a non-destructive data [...] Read more.
The hydrological and mechanical behavior of soil is determined by the moisture content, soil water (matric) potential, fines content, and plasticity. However, these parameters are often difficult or impractical to determine in the field. Remote characterization of soil parameters is a non-destructive data collection process well suited to large or otherwise inaccessible areas. A ground-based, field-deployable remote sensor, called the soil observation laser absorption spectrometer (SOLAS), was developed to collect measurements from the surface of bare soils and to assess the in-situ condition and essential parameters of the soil. The SOLAS instrument transmits coherent light at two wavelengths using two, continuous-wave, near-infrared diode lasers and the instrument receives backscattered light through a co-axial 203-mm diameter telescope aperture. The received light is split into a hyperspectral sensing channel and a laser absorption spectrometry (LAS) channel via a multi-channel optical receiver. The hyperspectral channel detects light in the visible to shortwave infrared wavelengths, while the LAS channel filters and directs near-infrared light into a pair of photodetectors. Atmospheric water vapor is inferred using the differential absorption of the on- and off-line laser wavelengths (823.20 nm and 847.00 nm, respectively). Range measurement is determined using a frequency-modulated, self-chirped, coherent, homodyne detection scheme. The development of the instrument (transmitter, receiver, data acquisition components) is described herein. The potential for rapid characterization of physical and hydro-mechanical soil properties, including volumetric water content, matric potential, fines content, and plasticity, using the SOLAS remote sensor is discussed. The envisioned applications for the instrument include assessing soils on unstable slopes, such as wildfire burn sites, or stacked mine tailings. Through the combination of spectroradiometry, differential absorption, and range altimetry methodologies, the SOLAS instrument is a novel approach to ground-based remote sensing of the natural environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Regional Soil Moisture)
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