Soil moisture variability within remote sensing pixels

Journal Article · Mon Nov 30 04:00:00 EST 1992 · Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/92JD00882· OSTI ID:6285017

Charpentier, M A; Groffman, P M ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Rhode Island, Kingston (United States)

This work is part of the First International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP) Field Experiment (FIFE), an international land-surface-atmosphere experiment aimed at improving the way climate models represent energy, water, heat, and carbon exchanges, and improving the utilization of satellite based remote sensing to monitor such parameters. This paper addresses the question of soil moisture variation within the field of view of a remote sensing pixel. Remote sensing is the only practical way to sense soil moisture over large areas, but it is known that there can be large variations of soil moisture within the field of view of a pixel. The difficulty with this is that many processes, such as gas exchange between surface and atmosphere can vary dramatically with moisture content, and a small wet spot, for example, can have a dramatic impact on such processes, and thereby bias remote sensing data results. Here the authors looked at the impact of surface topography on the level of soil moisture, and the interaction of both on the variability of soil moisture sensed by a push broom microwave radiometer (PBMR). In addition the authors looked at the question of whether variations of soil moisture within pixel size areas could be used to assign errors to PBMR generated soil moisture data.

• OSTI ID: 6285017
• Journal Information: Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States), Journal Name: Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States) Vol. 97:D17; ISSN 0148-0227; ISSN JGREA2
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540220* -- Environment
Terrestrial-- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport-- (1990-)
AIR-BIOSPHERE INTERACTIONS
CLIMATE MODELS
DISTRIBUTION
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
MOISTURE
RADIATION DETECTORS
RADIOMETERS
REMOTE SENSING
SOILS
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
TOPOGRAPHY