Local Scale (3-m) Soil Moisture Mapping Using SMAP and Planet SuperDove

Jinyang Du, John S. Kimball, Rajat Bindlish, Jeffrey P. Walker, Jennifer D. Watts

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

A capability for mapping meter-level resolution soil moisture with frequent temporal sampling over large regions is essential for quantifying local-scale environmental heterogeneity and eco-hydrologic behavior. However, available surface soil moisture (SSM) products generally involve much coarser grain sizes ranging from 30 m to several 10 s of kilometers. Hence, a new method is proposed to estimate 3-m resolution SSM using a combination of multi-sensor fusion, machine-learning (ML), and Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) matching approaches. This method established favorable SSM correspondence between 3-m pixels and overlying 9-km grid cells from overlapping Planet SuperDove (PSD) observations and NASA Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) mission products. The resulting 3-m SSM predictions showed improved accuracy by reducing absolute bias and RMSE by ~0.01 cm3/cm3 over the original SMAP data in relation to in situ soil moisture measurements for the Australian Yanco region while preserving the high sampling frequency (1–3 day global revisit) and sensitivity to surface wetness (R 0.865) from SMAP. Heterogeneous soil moisture distributions varying with vegetation biomass gradients and irrigation regimes were generally captured within a selected study area. Further algorithm refinement and implementation for regional applications will allow for improvement in water resources management, precision agriculture, and disaster forecasts and responses.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3812
JournalRemote Sensing
Volume14
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2022

Funding

This research was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), grant number 80NSSC21K1350.

FundersFunder number
National Aeronautics and Space Administration80NSSC21K1350

    Keywords

    • CDF matching
    • Google Earth Engine
    • Planet SuperDove
    • SMAP
    • local scale
    • machine learning
    • soil moisture

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