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Index Geophysics

Hydrological Evaluation of Satellite Soil Moisture Data in Two Basins of Different Climate and Vegetation Density Conditions

Item

Title (Dublin Core)

Hydrological Evaluation of Satellite Soil Moisture Data in Two Basins of Different Climate and Vegetation Density Conditions

Description (Dublin Core)

Accurate soil moisture information is very important for real-time flood forecasting. Although satellite soil moisture observations are useful information, their validations are generally hindered by the large spatial difference with the point-based measurements, and hence they cannot be directly applied in hydrological modelling. This study adopts a widely applied operational hydrological model Xinanjiang (XAJ) as a hydrological validation tool. Two widely used microwave sensors (SMOS and AMSR-E) are evaluated, over two basins (French Broad and Pontiac) with different climate types and vegetation covers. The results demonstrate SMOS outperforms AMSR-E in the Pontiac basin (cropland), while both products perform poorly in the French Broad basin (forest). The MODIS NDVI thresholds of 0.81 and 0.64 (for cropland and forest basins, resp.) are very effective in dividing soil moisture datasets into “denser” and “thinner” vegetation periods. As a result, in the cropland, the statistical performance is further improved for both satellites (i.e., improved to NSE = 0.74, RMSE = 0.0059 m and NSE = 0.58, RMSE = 0.0066 m for SMOS and AMER-E, resp.). The overall assessment suggests that SMOS is of reasonable quality in estimating basin-scale soil moisture at moderate-vegetated areas, and NDVI is a useful indicator for further improving the performance.

Creator (Dublin Core)

Lu Zhuo
Dawei Han

Subject (Dublin Core)

Meteorology. Climatology
QC851-999

Publisher (Dublin Core)

Hindawi Limited

Date (Dublin Core)

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

Type (Dublin Core)

article

Identifier (Dublin Core)

1687-9309
1687-9317
10.1155/2017/1086456
https://doaj.org/article/6edb2a99a063458186624b2cc1b188c8

Source (Dublin Core)

Advances in Meteorology, Vol 2017 (2017)

Language (Dublin Core)

EN

Relation (Dublin Core)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2017/1086456
https://doaj.org/toc/1687-9309
https://doaj.org/toc/1687-9317

Provenance (Dublin Core)

Journal Licence: CC BY