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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 #355680
Research Project: Integrating Remote Sensing, Measurements and Modeling for Multi-Scale Assessment of Water Availability, Use, and Quality in Agroecosystems

Location: Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory

Title: Utility of soil moisture data products for natural disaster applications

Author
item Crow, Wade

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/15/2019
Publication Date: 7/20/2019
Citation: Crow, W.T. 2019. Utility of soil moisture data products for natural disaster applications. Book Chapter. p. 65-85. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2017-0-02344-3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/C2017-0-02344-3

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Soil moisture is typically defined as the volume of soil water per unit volume of soil. Despite its negligible volume fraction of the global hydrologic cycle, soil moisture plays an outsized role via its regulation of water, momentum and energy fluxes between the upper surface of the Earth and the lower atmosphere. In addition, soil moisture strongly affects the material and chemical properties of the land surface. Since these properties and fluxes play a central role in the onset and propagation of many types of natural disaster, soil moisture is a critical environmental variable for natural disaster risk assessment, extreme event forecasting, within-event monitoring and post-event assessment. Here, we will review the current state-of-the-art in soil moisture estimation and measurement techniques (Section I) and discuss ongoing efforts to integrate soil moisture data products into these natural disaster applications (Section II).