Abstract
Soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and agricultural drought are so closely interlinked phenomena that deficiency in soil moisture causes reduction in ET, which eventually leads to vegetative stress and agricultural drought. Monitoring of soil moisture, ET, and vegetation condition is indispensable to identify terrestrial drought conditions to take proactive measures and mitigate its negative consequences. Although conventional methods such as the point-based measurements of soil moisture, evapotranspiration, precipitation, and temperature records measured at the ground stations (e.g., soil moisture networks, meteorological stations, and Eddy covariance flux towers) provide accurate discreet observations, they are unable to accurately capture the conditions in places between the ground stations. Therefore, the techniques based on remote sensing inputs are important to track the spatially continuous estimates of soil moisture, ET, and vegetation condition from the regional to global scales, while the point-based estimates of soil moisture, ET, precipitation, and temperature can be utilized to assist in validating satellite-based estimates of soil moisture, ET, and agricultural drought. In this chapter, three distinct proven methods to estimate soil moisture, ET, and agricultural drought using satellite and ancillary data will be introduced, and then, some example maps and their validation results against the ground truth will be presented.
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