An observation system simulation experiment for the impact of land surface heterogeneity on AMSR-E soil moisture retrieval

Wade T. Crow, Matthias Drusch, Eric F. Wood

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

71 Scopus citations

Abstract

Using a high-resolution hydrologic model, a land surface microwave emission model (LSMEM), and an explicit simulation of the orbital and scanning characteristics for the advanced microwave sensing radiometer (AMSR-E), an observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) is carded out to assess the impact of land surface heterogeneity on large-scale retrieval and validation of soil moisture products over the U.S. Southern Great Plains using the 6.925 GHz channel on the AMSR-E sensor. Land surface heterogeneity impacts soil moisture products through the presence of nonlinearities in processes represented by the LSMEM, as well as the fundamental inconsistency in spatial scale between gridded soil moisture imagery derived from in situ point-scale sampling, numerical modelling, and microwave remote sensing sources. Results within the 575000 km2 Red-Arkansas River basin show that, for surfaces with vegetation water contents below 0.75 kg/m2, these two scale effects induce root mean squared errors (RMSEs) of 1.7% volumetric (0.017 cmwater3/cmsoil3) into daily 60 km AMSR-E soil moisture products and RMS differences of 3.0% (0.030 cmwater3/cmsoil3) into 60 km comparisons of AMSR-E soil moisture products and in situ field-scale measurements of soil moisture sampled on a fixed 25-km grid.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1622-1631
Number of pages10
JournalIEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Volume39
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2001

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • General Earth and Planetary Sciences

Keywords

  • Antenna gain function
  • Hydrological modelling
  • Passive microwave remote sensing
  • Soil moisture

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