Characterization of the soil water reservoir is essential for modelling the interactions between crops and their environment. Current study utilizes the inversion of a crop model for estimating root zone properties. The approach has been evaluated over four crops (sunflower, sorghum, turmeric, maize) grown on different soils and several years in South India. The components of AWC (available water capacity) namely soil water content at field capacity and wilting point, and soil depth of two-layered soils were estimated by inversion of the crop model STICS with the GLUE (generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation) approach using observations of surface soil moisture (SSM; typically from 0 to 10 cm deep) and leaf area index (LAI). The results showed that the quality of parameter estimation largely depends on the hydric regime and its interaction with crop type. These results show the potential of crop model inversion for estimating the AWC components of two-layered soils.
The availability of remotely sensed soil and vegetation observations makes it well suited for large scale applications.
The details of the article are available at: http://www.aapahinnovations.com/publications/