scholarly journals Evaporative Fluxes and Surface Soil Moisture Retrievals in a Mediterranean Setting from Sentinel-3 and the “Simplified Triangle”

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 3192 ◽  
Author(s):  
George P. Petropoulos ◽  
Ionut Sandric ◽  
Dionissios Hristopulos ◽  
Toby Nahum Carlson

Earth Observation (EO) makes it possible to obtain information on key parameters characterizing interactions among Earth’s system components, such as evaporative fraction (EF) and surface soil moisture (SSM). Notably, techniques utilizing EO data of land surface temperature (Ts) and vegetation index (VI) have shown promise in this regard. The present study investigates, for the first time, the accuracy of one such technique, known as the “simplified triangle”, using Sentinel-3 EO data, acquired for 44 days in 2018 at three savannah FLUXNET sites in Spain. The technique was found to be able to predict both EF and SSM with reasonable accuracy when compared to collocated ground measurements. Comparisons performed for all days together showed relatively low Root Mean square Difference (RMSD) for both EF (0.191) and SSM (0.012 cm3 cm−3) and good correlation coefficients (R) of 0.721 and 0.577, respectively. Both EF and SSM were also largely in agreement with land cover and seasonal variability. The present study comprises the first detailed assessment of the “simplified triangle”, in this case, using Sentinel-3 data and in a Mediterranean setting. Findings, albeit preliminary, are of significant value regarding the use of the investigated technique as a tool of environmental management, and towards ongoing, worldwide efforts aiming at developing operationally relevant products based on the Ts/VI feature space and EO data based on new satellites such as Sentinel-3.

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 8703-8740 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Wang ◽  
D. Huang ◽  
X.-G. Wang ◽  
Y.-R. Liu ◽  
F. Zhou

Abstract. The trapezoidal relationship between surface temperature (Ts) and vegetation index (VI) was used to estimate soil moisture in the present study. An iterative algorithm is proposed to estimate the vertices of the Ts~VI trapezoid theoretically for each grid, and then WDI is calculated for each grid using MODIS remotely sensed measurements of surface temperature and enhanced vegetation index (EVI). The capability of using WDI based on Ts~VI trapezoid to estimate soil moisture is evaluated using soil moisture observations and antecedent precipitation in the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW) in Arizona, USA. The result shows that, Ts~VI trapezoid based WDI can well capture temporal variation in surface soil moisture, but the capability of detecting spatial variation is poor for such a semi-arid region as WGEW.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Piles ◽  
Miriam Pablos Hernandez ◽  
Mercè Vall-llossera ◽  
Gerard Portal ◽  
Ionut Sandric ◽  
...  

<p>Earth Observation (EO) makes it possible to obtain information on key parameters characterizing interactions among Earth’s system components, such as evaporative fraction (EF) and surface soil moisture (SSM). Notably, techniques utilizing EO data of land surface temperature (Ts) and vegetation index (VI) have shown promise in this regard. The present study presents an implementation of a downscaling method that combined the soil moisture product from SMOS and the Fractional Vegetation Cover provided by Sentinel 3 ESA platform.</p><p>The applicability of the investigated technique is demonstrated for a period of two years (2017-2018) using in-situ data acquired from five CarboEurope sites and from all the sites available in the REMEDHUS soil moisture monitoring network, representing a variety of climatic, topographic and environmental conditions. Predicted parameters were compared against co-orbital ground measurements acquired from several European sites belonging to the CarboEurope ground observational network.</p><p>Results indicated a close agreement between all the inverted parameters and the corresponding in-situ data. SSM maps predicted from the “triangle”  SSM showed a small bias,<sup></sup> but a large scatter. The results of this study provide strong supportive evidence of the potential value of the investigated herein methodology in accurately deriving estimates of key parameters characterising land surface interactions that can meet the needs of fine-scale hydrological applications. Moreover, the applicability of the presented approach demonstrates the added value of the synergy between ESA’s operational products acquired from different satellite sensors, namely in this case SMOS & Sentienl-3. As it is not tight to any particular sensor can also be implemented with technologically advanced EO sensors launched recently or planned to be launched.</p><p>In the present work Dr Petropoulos participation has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ENViSIoN under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 752094.</p>


2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Petropoulos ◽  
T.N. Carlson ◽  
M.J. Wooster ◽  
S. Islam

Imagery from remote sensing systems, often combined with ancillary ground information, is able to provide repetitive, synoptic views of key parameters characterizing land surface interactions, including surface energy fluxes and surface soil moisture. Differing methodologies using a wide range of remote sensing data have been developed for this purpose. Approaches vary from purely empirical to more complex ones, including residual methods and those that have their basis in the biophysical properties characterizing a two-dimensional Ts/VI (surface temperature/ vegetation index) scatterplot domain derived from remote sensing observations. The present article aims to offer a comprehensive and systematic review of this latter group of methods, which differ in terms of the complexity and assumptions they entail as well as their requirement for field-based and other ancillary data. Prior to the review, the biophysical meanings and properties encapsulated in the Ts/VI feature space is elucidated, since these represent the building block upon which all the Ts/VI methods described herein are based. The overview of the Ts/VI methods is also very timely, as one such method is being scheduled in the operational retrieval of surface soil moisture content by the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), in a series of satellite platforms due to be launched in the next 12 years starting from 2016.


2014 ◽  
Vol 607 ◽  
pp. 830-834
Author(s):  
Hong Zhang Ma ◽  
Su Mei Liu

—Surface soil moisture is an important parameter in describing the water and energy exchanges at the land surface/atmosphere interface. Passive microwave remote sensors have great potential for monitoring surface soil moisture over land surface. The objective of this study is going to establish a model for estimating the effective temperature of land surface covered with vegetation canopy and to investigate how to compute the microwave radiative brightness temperature of land surface covered with vegetation canopy in considering of the canopy scatter effect.


Author(s):  
G.P. Petropoulos ◽  
G. Ireland ◽  
H. Griffiths ◽  
T. Islam ◽  
D. Kalivas ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 4895-4911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriëlle J. M. De Lannoy ◽  
Rolf H. Reichle

Abstract. Three different data products from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission are assimilated separately into the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, version 5 (GEOS-5) to improve estimates of surface and root-zone soil moisture. The first product consists of multi-angle, dual-polarization brightness temperature (Tb) observations at the bottom of the atmosphere extracted from Level 1 data. The second product is a derived SMOS Tb product that mimics the data at a 40° incidence angle from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. The third product is the operational SMOS Level 2 surface soil moisture (SM) retrieval product. The assimilation system uses a spatially distributed ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) with seasonally varying climatological bias mitigation for Tb assimilation, whereas a time-invariant cumulative density function matching is used for SM retrieval assimilation. All assimilation experiments improve the soil moisture estimates compared to model-only simulations in terms of unbiased root-mean-square differences and anomaly correlations during the period from 1 July 2010 to 1 May 2015 and for 187 sites across the US. Especially in areas where the satellite data are most sensitive to surface soil moisture, large skill improvements (e.g., an increase in the anomaly correlation by 0.1) are found in the surface soil moisture. The domain-average surface and root-zone skill metrics are similar among the various assimilation experiments, but large differences in skill are found locally. The observation-minus-forecast residuals and analysis increments reveal large differences in how the observations add value in the Tb and SM retrieval assimilation systems. The distinct patterns of these diagnostics in the two systems reflect observation and model errors patterns that are not well captured in the assigned EnKF error parameters. Consequently, a localized optimization of the EnKF error parameters is needed to further improve Tb or SM retrieval assimilation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bouchra Ait Hssaine ◽  
Olivier Merlin ◽  
Jamal Ezzahar ◽  
Nitu Ojha ◽  
Salah Er-raki ◽  
...  

Abstract. Thermal-based two-source energy balance modeling is very useful for estimating the land evapotranspiration (ET) at a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. However, the land surface temperature (LST) is not sufficient for constraining simultaneously both soil and vegetation flux components in such a way that assumptions (on either the soil or the vegetation fluxes) are commonly required. To avoid such assumptions, a new energy balance model (TSEB-SM) was recently developed in Ait Hssaine et al. (2018a) to integrate the microwave-derived near-surface soil moisture (SM), in addition to the thermal-derived LST and vegetation cover fraction (fc). Whereas, TSEB-SM has been recently tested using in-situ measurements, the objective of this paper is to evaluate the performance of TSEB-SM in real-life using 1 km resolution MODIS (Moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) LST and fc data and the 1 km resolution SM data disaggregated from SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) observations by using DisPATCh. The approach is applied during a four-year period (2014–2018) over a rainfed wheat field in the Tensift basin, central Morocco, during a four-year period (2014–2018). The field was seeded for the 2014–2015 (S1), 2016–2017 (S2) and 2017–2018 (S3) agricultural season, while it was not ploughed (remained as bare soil) during the 2015–2016 (B1) agricultural season. The mean retrieved values of (arss, brss) calculated for the entire study period using satellite data are (7.32, 4.58). The daily calibrated αPT ranges between 0 and 1.38 for both S1 and S2. Its temporal variability is mainly attributed to the rainfall distribution along the agricultural season. For S3, the daily retrieved αPT remains at a mostly constant value (∼ 0.7) throughout the study period, because of the lack of clear sky disaggregated SM and LST observations during this season. Compared to eddy covariance measurements, TSEB driven only by LST and fc data significantly overestimates latent heat fluxes for the four seasons. The overall mean bias values are 119, 94, 128 and 181 W/m2 for S1, S2, S3 and B1 respectively. In contrast, these errors are much reduced when using TSEB-SM (SM and LST combined data) with the mean bias values estimated as 39, 4, 7 and 62 W/m2 for S1, S2, S3 and B1 respectively.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ichirow Kaihotsu ◽  
Jun Asanuma ◽  
Kentaro Aida ◽  
Dambaravjaa Oyunbaatar

Abstract This study evaluated the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) L2 soil moisture product (ver. 3) using in situ hydrological observational data, acquired over 7 years (2012–2018), from a 50 × 50 km flat area of the Mongolian Plateau covered with bare soil, pasture and shrubs. Although AMSR2 slightly underestimated soil moisture content at 3-cm depth, satisfactory timing was observed in both the response patterns and the in situ soil moisture data, and the differences between these factors were not large. In terms of the relationship between AMSR2 soil moisture from descending orbits and in situ measured soil moisture at 3-cm depth, the values of the RMSE (m3/m3) and the bias (m3/m3) varied from 0.028 to 0.063 and from 0.011 to − 0.001 m3/m3, respectively. The values of the RMSE and bias depended on rainfall condition. The mean value of the RMSE for the 7-year period was 0.042 m3/m3, i.e., lower than the target accuracy 0.050 m3/m3. The validation results for descending orbits were found slightly better than for ascending orbits. Comparison of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) soil moisture product with the AMSR2 L2 soil moisture product showed that AMSR2 could observe surface soil moisture with nearly same accuracy and stability. However, the bias of the AMSR2 soil moisture measurement was slightly negative and poorer than that of SMOS with deeper soil moisture measurement. It means that AMSR2 cannot effectively measure soil moisture at 3-cm depth. In situ soil temperature at 3-cm depth and surface vegetation (normalized difference vegetation index) did not influence the underestimation of AMSR2 soil moisture measurements. These results suggest that a possible cause of the underestimation of AMSR2 soil moisture measurements is the difference between the depth of the AMSR2 observations and in situ soil moisture measurements. Overall, this study proved the AMSR2 L2 soil moisture product has been useful for monitoring daily surface soil moisture over large grassland areas and it clearly demonstrated the high-performance capability of AMSR2 since 2012.


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