| SMAPVEX08 |
|
SMAPVEX08
|
Soil Moisture Active Passive Validation Experiment 2008
The Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission (SMAP) is currently in Phase A and addressing numerous issues related to the L3 soil moisture retrieval algorithms. During discussions at the SMAP Workshop in June 2007, at pre-Phase A Science Transition Team meetings, and previously during Soil Moisture Mission Working Group meetings, a number of specific questions have been identified. Many of these questions need to be answered in the near-term: • How well do new alternative RFI suppression techniques under consideration for SMAP work over RFI contaminated land areas? (RFI) • There is a lack of robust sets of concurrent passive and active L-band observational data including temporal change for algorithm development and validation. Concurrent active-passive is what is new with SMAP and we have very few data sets to date for algorithm development and evaluation. (TAP) • How do high resolution SAR relate to lower resolution radar data of SMAP? There are potentially valuable SAR resources (PALSAR and UAVSAR) that can contribute to SMAP validation. (RS) • What effect does azimuthal orientation have on radar backscatter for different land covers and topographic conditions at the spatial resolution of SMAP? This is a significant question in using temporal change algorithms. (AZ) • Does topography have to be accounted for in retrievals? (TOPO) • Can soil moisture be retrieved over urbanized areas? (URBAN) • Under what conditions can we expect to retrieve soil moisture under forest canopies? ( Addressing these issues as soon as possible would contribute to mission definition and algorithms design and selection. To the necessary information, a series of aircraft-based flights will be conducted on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and
|
