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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #338614
Title: Soil moisture retrieval in forest biomes: field experiment focus for SMAP 2018-2020 and beyond

Author
item Jackson, Thomas
item KIMBALL, J. - University Of Montana
item ENTEKHABI, D. - Broad Institute Of Mit/harvard
item YUEH, S. - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
item COLLIANDER, A. - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
item MISRA, S. - National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
item Cosh, Michael

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/2/2017
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) project has made excellent progress in addressing the requirements and science goals of the primary mission. The primary mission baseline requirement is estimates of global surface soil moisture with an error of no greater than 4% volumetric (one sigma) excluding regions of snow and ice, mountainous topography, open water, urban areas, and forested vegetation with water content (VWC) greater than 5 kg m-2. During the next phase of the mission an expansion of the science scope and the robustness of the products provided will be initiated. These enhancements would result from the development and implementation of soil moisture retrieval algorithms that can provide reliable information on soil moisture and vegetation conditions in forest biomes. The enhanced products would facilitate the investigation of critical science questions involving forest dominant biomes, which span more than 30 percent of the global land area including. In order to provide this information in forested regions and regions with woody biomass, SMAP must provide accurate and reliable estimates of soil moisture for these biomes and process instrument observations to determine VWC. This will involve two integrated activities: the zeroth-order radiative transfer model needs to be improved to include higher order soil-canopy interactions (above SMAP Baseline tau-omega formulation) and the algorithms need to be tested (validated) with airborne and ground measurements in campaigns over forests (building upon initial pre- and post-launch SMAP field campaigns targeting grassland, shrubland and cropland areas). A field campaign to address these objectives will be presented that would be conducted over temperate forests in 2019.