NH42A-04
Advances in downscaling soil moisture for use in drought and flood assessments: Implications for data from the Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) Mission
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 11:05
309 (Moscone South)
Venkataraman Lakshmi, Univ South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States, Bin Fang, Columbia University of New York, Palisades, NY, United States and Ujjwal Narayan, Richland County Administration, Jersey City, NJ, United States
Abstract:
Hydrological hazards, namely droughts and floods are dependent on the deficit and excess of soil moisture. With the launch of the Soil Moisture Active and Passive Mission (SMAP) in January 2015 we will have twice a day global observations of soil moisture. However the spatial resolution of soil moisture retrieved from the SMAP radiometer is 10s of km and the SMAP radar will provide backscatter observations 100m-1km. High spatial resolution of soil moisture helps to monitor floods and droughts in a spatially distributed fashion. The current focus is finding the best way to obtain high spatial resolution soil moisture using the radar and radiometer observations. In this presentation we will deal with downscaling by couple of methods - (a) Use of the thermal inertia relation between soil moisture and surface temperature modulated by vegetation (b) Relationship between soil moisture and evaporation (c) Change detection using high spatial resolution active radar data.
