Abstract
This paper presents a detailed methodology to process AMSR-E soil moisture data to generate average soil moisture maps of desired durations be it weekly, monthly or yearly over a large geographical area like a continent or a sub-continent. The paper also explores utility of AMSR-E soil moisture product (AE_Land 3 product) to understand the soil moisture variations over Indian subcontinent by analysing daily soil moisture data for entire calendar year of 2009. In order to demonstrate the developed methodology the year 2009 was selected wherein a total of 730 AMSR-E daily scenes (365 each for ascending as well as descending passes) were processed and analysed. Although the absolute values of soil moisture derived from AMSR-E are not showing good agreement with soil moisture status on ground which is due to large variability in soil moisture within the coarse-resolution cell offered by passive sensors [1] but in general AMSR-E derived soil moisture values are well explained on the basis of rainfall data and agricultural practices adopted in different states of Indian sub-continent. The soundness of the detailed methodology proposed in this paper has been well supported by studying the variations in AMSR-E derived soil moisture with seasonal variations and rainfall data. It has been observed that the soil moisture variations are in line with the seasonal changes as well as the rainfall variations.
Highlights
Soil moisture is the water held in pores in the soil in liquid and vapour phases [2,3]
The variation of soil moisture content over entire Indian subcontinent is mainly controlled by rainfall, seasons and agricultural practices adopted by farmers of different states
The values are significantly lower than the observed soil moisture values, which may be attributed due to the coarse resolution of AMSR-E sensor of the order of 56km which is resampled to a 25km resolution, due to this reason it is difficult to get pure pixels in agricultural areas
Summary
Soil moisture is the water held in pores in the soil in liquid and vapour phases [2,3] It can be defined as the temporary storage of water within a shallow layer of earth’s upper surface. Soil moisture is of utmost importance in agricultural domain, for agriculture yield, crop growth forecasting, irrigation scheduling Apart from this it is a very well-known fact that variation in soil moisture is directly associated with rainfall, and surface runoff is a phenomenon which is attributed to the fact that it occurs when rainfall rate is more than the infiltration rate. Soil moisture proves to be a contributing factor in case of surface runoff and it is important for monitoring hazards like floods and droughts. It plays an important role in meteorological applications in the sense that soil moisture is used in weather predication models and global circulation models to identify weather patterns
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