Project Number: 1265-13610-027-46
Project Type: Reimbursable

Start Date: Nov 15, 2005
End Date: Aug 01, 2008

Objective:
Soil moisture is a significant boundary condition that controls summer precipitation over the central U.S. and other large mid-lattitude continental regions and essential information for seasonal production. Precise in site measurements of soil moisture are sparse. Remote sensing, if achievable with sufficient accuracy and reliability, would provide truly meaningful wide-area soil wetness. New concepts to achieve this goal must be developed through field experimentation.

Approach:
Soil moisture remote sensing experiments will be conducted as part of a series of large-scale investigation of land surface hydrology. NASA and USDA support these activities with satellite products and an intensive ground/aircraft campaign during the Soil Moisture Experiment 2005 (SMEX05). We are proposing to augment current insitu observations (to provide long term coverage) and to conduct an intensive field campaign (to provide extensive and high spatial resolution data sets). These will be combined with aircraft and satellite observations to validate current soil moisture estimation methods and to explore new options for the future satellites such as HYDROS.