Estimation of higher spatial and temporal resolution soil moisture

Availability of soil moisture observations at a fine spatial and temporal resolution is prerequisite for various hydrological, agricultural and meteorological applications. There is a good potential to merge the passive (relatively fine temporal resolution but with a relatively coarser spatial resolution) and active (relatively coarse temporal resolution but with a relatively finer spatial resolution) microwave retrieved surface soil moisture from different sensors to obtain a finer spatial and temporal resolution product. In the current study,
a model is developed to Merge Active and Passive Soil Moisture (MAPSM) spatio-temporally to obtain a finer spatial and temporal resolution soil moisture product. The developed model is tested using the active and passive microwave soil moisture in Berambadi watershed located in a semi-arid climate in southern India over the period from 2010 to 2013. At coarse scale, level 2 soil moisture products derived from passive microwave data of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite (3 days temporal resolution and 40 km nominal spatial resolution) and at finer scale soil moisture retrieved from 30 images of RADARSAT-2 active microwave data (24 days temporal resolution and less than 100 m spatial resolution) are used in this study for testing the model. MAPSM is able to provide the good estimate of soil moisture at fine spatial (500 m) resolution.

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