Disaggregation Based On Physical And Theoretical Scale Change Research Articles

A framework for estimating all-weather fine resolution soil moisture from the integration of physics-based and machine learning-based algorithms

Due to the effects of radio frequency interference and the limitations of algorithms under specific conditions, most of the currently available microwave-based soil moisture (SM) products are spatially discontinuous and have coarse spatial resolution, whereas optical observations also reveal various data gaps due to cloud contamination. Hence, the prediction of SM over invalid pixels and disaggregation from coarse to high scales are two main processes for obtaining SM at fine spatiotemporal resolution (e.g., daily/1-km). In the present study, two methods with respect to disaggregation-first or prediction-first were investigated from the synergetic use of the widely recognized European Space Agency-Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) SM product and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) region. Specifically, the Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DisPATCh) algorithm and the generalized regression neural network (GRNN) were implemented in the disaggregation and prediction, respectively. In DisPATCh, spatially complete land surface temperature (LST), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and digital elevation model (DEM) were provided as essential inputs to downscale the microwave-based ESA-CCI to a spatial resolution of 1 km, whereas MODIS-derived LST, NDVI, land surface albedo and DEM were considered in the GRNN prediction. Following the two methods, the daily/1-km SM dataset over a period of three years was finally estimated. Assessments with ground in-situ SM measurements over the TP region reveal an acceptable accuracy with unbiased root mean square errors of ∼ 0.06 m3/m3, indicating the potential to obtain operational daily/1-km spatially continuous SM products in future developments.

A web-based system for satellite-based high-resolution global soil moisture maps

Nowadays, a wide range of applications require near-real-time Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) data at high spatial resolution. However, operational passive microwave systems like SMOS and SMAP can only acquire such information at a relatively coarser resolution. Therefore, several downscaling algorithms have been developed to address this issue and provide SSM maps at a finer spatial scale. Users may, however, find it difficult to implement the downscaling algorithm due to the complexity of integrating various data sources. Disaggregation based on Physical and Theoretical scale Change (DisPATCh) is one of the algorithms that is widely accepted to downscale passive microwave SSM observations. But the complexity of modeling, the variety of data sources and formats of input data make it very difficult for users to implement the algorithm. Thus, we developed a Satellite-based Hydrological Monitoring System (SHMS), which facilitates this gap through the implementation of the DisPATCh algorithm to generate large-scale SSM maps with high resolution, which is achieved by combining SMAP and MODIS products. The System Usability Scale (SUS) method was used to evaluate the system's strengths and weaknesses. The SUS evaluation results show that 74.75% of SHMS users are satisfied with the system's performance.

Irrigation estimates from space: Implementation of different approaches to model the evapotranspiration contribution within a soil-moisture-based inversion algorithm

Irrigation is the most impacting and uncertain human intervention on the water resource. The possibility of retrieving information on irrigation practices through remote sensing technology opens unprecedented perspectives on the monitoring of anthropized basins. This study is aimed at assessing the impact of different approaches to model the contribution of the evapotranspiration in retrieving the amounts of water applied for irrigation through a soil-moisture-based (SM-based) inversion algorithm; such a contribution is conclusive especially over semi-arid regions. Three modeling approaches relying on both calculated and remotely sensed actual and potential evapotranspiration (ET and PET) data sets were implemented to represent the evapotranspiration rate within the SM-based inversion method, which allows backward estimation of irrigation through the soil water balance inversion. By combining the different evapotranspiration data sources and modeling approaches, seven experiments aimed at inverting DISPATCH (DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale CHange) downscaled SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) soil moisture at 1 km to estimate irrigation over four heavily irrigated agricultural districts located in Spain (Aragon and Catalonia) were compared. The results highlighted that the application of the FAO56 guidelines parametrization relying on the use of optical data as proposed by the authors in a previous study remains the most reliable configuration. In fact, the implementation of a simplified approach not considering the transpiration component of the specific crop led to irrigation underestimates. Finally, it is interesting to note that the application of the method with remotely sensed ET from MODIS (MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) produced reliable district-aggregated irrigation estimates, thus opening the perspective of an algorithm configuration forced with remote sensing data only.

Double-scale analysis on the detectability of irrigation signals from remote sensing soil moisture over an area with complex topography in central Italy

Despite a detailed knowledge of the spatial-temporal dynamics of irrigation being necessary to optimize the agricultural production without exacerbating the pressure exercised on the water resource, such information is still often lacking worldwide. In this study, a double-scale analysis on the detectability of the irrigation occurrence over an area in central Italy through remote sensing soil moisture is proposed; the period of interest is a 3-year time span from 2017 to 2019. The detectability of district- or sub-district-scale irrigation signals through remotely sensed soil moisture data is investigated at two different spatial resolutions: 1 km and plot scale. Three soil moisture products sampled at 1 km resolution are evaluated: a DISPATCH (DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale CHange) downscaled version of SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) and two Sentinel-1-derived products, namely the 1 km version delivered by Copernicus and a plot-scale-born version developed by THEIA and aggregated at 1 km. The THEIA Sentinel-1 product aggregated at 100 m is used in the plot-scale analysis. Over the study area, the irrigation extent is determined by the fragmentation of the agricultural fields and the complex topography, making the adoption of plot-scale data necessary. Satisfactory results are obtained by comparing maps of irrigated areas at 100 m spatial resolution produced through the k-means clustering algorithm with ground-truth data, since the method fails only once out of seven in properly reproducing the irrigated or non-irrigated conditions occurred over four pilot agricultural fields.

Disaggregation of SMAP Soil Moisture at 20 m Resolution: Validation and Sub-Field Scale Analysis

This paper introduces a modified version of the DisPATCh (Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change) algorithm to disaggregate an SMAP surface soil moisture (SSM) product at a 20 m spatial resolution, through the use of sharpened Sentinel-3 land surface temperature (LST) data. Using sharpened LST as a high resolution proxy of SSM is a novel approach that needs to be validated and can be employed in a variety of applications that currently lack in a product with a similar high spatio-temporal resolution. The proposed high resolution SSM product was validated against available in situ data for two different fields, and it was also compared with two coarser DisPATCh products produced, disaggregating SMAP through the use of an LST at 1 km from Sentinel-3 and MODIS. From the correlation between in situ data and disaggregated SSM products, a general improvement was found in terms of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (R) for the proposed high resolution product with respect to the two products at 1 km. For the first field analyzed, R was equal to 0.47 when considering the 20 m product, an improvement compared to the 0.28 and 0.39 for the 1 km products. The improvement was especially noticeable during the summer season, in which it was only possible to successfully capture field-specific irrigation practices at the 20 m resolution. For the second field, R was 0.31 for the 20 m product, also an improvement compared to the 0.21 and 0.23 for the 1 km product. Additionally, the new product was able to depict SSM spatial variability at a sub-field scale and a validation analysis is also proposed at this scale. The main advantage of the proposed product is its very high spatio-temporal resolution, which opens up new opportunities to apply remotely sensed SSM data in disciplines that require fine spatial scales, such as agriculture and water management.

Soil moisture downscaling using multiple modes of the DISPATCH algorithm in a semi-humid/humid region

Remotely sensed soil moisture (SM) with the enhanced spatial resolution (several kilometers or even tens of meters) is of value for important local applications like irrigation scheduling and farm-scale water management. The Disaggregation based on Physical and Theoretical scale Change (DISPATCH) algorithm is an established evaporation-based tool for passive-SM downscaling. However, its performance in areas where evapotranspiration is generally energy-limited has not been adequately evaluated. Here, DISPATCH is applied to coarse-scale L-band passive-SM to evaluate its applicability to produce a 1-km downscaled product in the semi-humid/humid Huai River Basin (HRB), which has been identified as challenging for DISPATCH in previous studies. The influence of different calibration modes of linear SEE (soil evaporative efficiency) model on disaggregation results and LST (land surface temperature) inputs at different temporal resolutions are also investigated. The performances of DISPATCH were evaluated using a spatio-temporal statistical analysis against available in-situ SM. Globally,DISPATCH performs poorly in HRB with low correlation and least-square regression slopes (significantly different to unity) between downscaled-SM and in-situ observations. This relatively poor performance is attributed to low background SM spatial variability and weak moisture-evaporation coupling within HRB. However, in spite of those global poor performances, an improvement in the SM spatio-temporal representation was observed under summer-dry conditions over HRB. The uncertainty of DISPATCH estimates can be reduced by the multi-date calibration of linear SEE model within HRB. Likewise, downscaled SM based on merging multiple LST products for three consecutive days has better temporal coverage and lower uncertainty than comparable products only using daily LST retrievals. These configurations are expected to further enlarge the applicability of DISPATCH in more humid climates.

Detecting and mapping irrigated areas in a Mediterranean environment by using remote sensing soil moisture and a land surface model

Although irrigation practices affect food production and water resource management, with ever more impacting effects under climate change and population increasing scenarios, detailed knowledge of irrigation is still lacking. In fact, explicit information on the spatial occurrence of irrigation and on the amounts of water used for this purpose is often not available, thus making irrigation the missing variable to comprehensively understand the hydrological cycle dynamics over agricultural areas. Nevertheless, remote sensing techniques can be used to delimit the irrigation extent.In this study, the capability of five remotely sensed soil moisture products to detect the irrigation signal over an area intensely equipped for irrigation in the North East of Spain is investigated; moreover, a method to map the actually irrigated areas based on the K-means clustering algorithm is proposed. The remote sensing soil moisture data sets used in this study are SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) at 1 km, SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) at 1 km and 9 km, Sentinel-1 at 1 km, and ASCAT (Advanced SCATterometer) at 12.5 km. The 1 km resolution versions of SMOS and SMAP are obtained by downscaling coarser SMOS and SMAP data through the DISPATCH (DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale CHange) algorithm. The analyses are supported by an additional data set of soil moisture at 1 km resolution simulated by the SURFEX-ISBA (SURFace EXternalisée – Interaction Sol Biosphère Atmosphère) land surface model.Among all the considered data sets, the L-band passive microwave downscaled products show the best performances in detecting the irrigation signal over the pilot area, especially SMAP at 1 km. The proposed maps of irrigated areas derived by exploiting soil moisture from SMAP at 1 km data set agree well (up to 78%) with the ground truth derived irrigated areas. Furthermore, the method is able to well distinguish the actually irrigated areas from rainfed agricultural areas, thus representing a useful tool to obtain reliable spatial information about the areas where irrigation actually occurs.

Generating high spatial and temporal soil moisture data by disaggregation of SMAP product and its assessment in different land covers

ABSTRACT Surface soil moisture (SSM) is an important parameter for many applications. Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite mission provides an SSM map at global scale. But its spatial resolution (36 km) is a big restriction for agricultural and hydrological studies at the catchment scale. Therefore, the present study was conducted to disaggregate the passive SMAP soil moisture data using the retrieved Soil Evaporative Efficiency (SEE) at 1-km spatial and daily temporal resolution from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and to assess the effectiveness of the method for generating data for different land covers. For this purpose, SMAP data were disaggregated using the SEE retrieved from daily MODIS data located at the southwest part of the United States. The accuracy of spatial and temporal variability of the disaggregated SMAP data was evaluated against the recorded in-situ soil moisture data in 202 stations of the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN) for a period of 1 year. Results indicate that the disaggregated SMAP data have a moderate correlation with in-situ soil moisture data, but it is strongly affected by land cover. The highest accuracy was observed in the pasture/hay land cover class with Correlation Coefficient (R) value of 0.683 and 0.632, Mean Difference (MD) of −0.004 and −0.001, Root-Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.049 and 0.056, and unbiased Root-Mean Square Error (ubRMSE) of 0.039 and 0.045 for the disaggregated and original SSM data with the unit of , respectively. The lowest accuracy was found in the barren land (rock/sand/clay) for the disaggregated and original SSM data with R of 0.0278 and 0.155, MD of −0:081 and −0.052, RMSE of 0.134 and 0.116, and ubRMSE of 0.106 and 0.103, respectively. Results indicate that in overall disaggregation of SMAP data using Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DisPATCh) algorithm and MODIS products has a good potential for generating high spatial and temporal resolution of SSM at the catchment scale. But it is strongly affected by the land cover class type, because the calculation of the SEE is based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Therefore, it can be recommended to retrieve the SEE with the attention to land cover class type and employ the other vegetation indices or methods.

Inter-comparison of several soil moisture downscaling methods over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China

Microwave remote sensing is able to retrieve soil moisture (SM) at an adequate level of accuracy. However, these microwave remotely sensed SM products usually have a spatial resolution of tens of kilometers which cannot satisfy the requirements of fine to medium scale applications such as agricultural irrigation and local water resource management. Several SM downscaling methods have been proposed to solve this mismatch by downscaling the coarse-scale SM to fine-scale (several kilometers or hundreds of meters). Although studies have been conducted over different climatic zones and from different data sets with good results, there is still a lack of a comprehensive comparison and evaluation between them to guide the production of high-resolution and high-accuracy SM data. Therefore, in this study we compared several SM downscaling methods (from 0.25° to 0.01°) based on polynormal fitting, physical model, machine learning and geostatistics over the Qinghai-Tibet plateau where there is a wide range of climate conditions from four aspects, that is, comparison with the original microwave product, comparison with in situ measurements, inter-comparison based on three-cornered hat (TCH) method, and a spatial feasibility analysis. The comparison results show that the method based on a physical model, in this case the Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DisPATCh) method, has the highest ability on preserving the coarse-scale feature of original microwave SM product, while to some extent, this ability could be a disadvantage for improving the accuracy of the downscaling results. In addition, soil evaporation efficiency (SEE) alone is not sufficient to represent SM spatial patterns over complex land surface. Geostatistics based area-to-area regression Kriging (ATARK) introduces the highest uncertainty caused by the overcorrection during the residual interpolation process while this process can also improve correlation (R) and correct the bias as well as provide more feasible spatial patterns and details. Two machine learning methods, the random forest (RF) and Gaussian process regression (GPR) show high stability on all comparison results but provide smoother spatial patterns. The multivariate statistical regression (MSR) method performs worst due to the fact that its simple linear regression model could not meet the requirement of SM fitting on complicated land surface. Moreover, all five downscaling methods show a declining accuracy after downscaling. This phenomenon may be caused by the spatial mismatch on fine-scale. In addition, this could also be caused by the tendency that downscaled results will usually provide more spatial details from downscaling predictors, while they cannot capture the temporal changes of the microwave SM product well. In general, this phenomenon tends to be more significant over heterogeneous land surface. All in all, five widely used soil moisture downscaling methods were compared based on a comprehensive comparison scheme to add to the body of knowledge in applicability of downcaling methods under different weather conditions.

Exploiting High-Resolution Remote Sensing Soil Moisture to Estimate Irrigation Water Amounts over a Mediterranean Region

Despite irrigation being one of the main sources of anthropogenic water consumption, detailed information about water amounts destined for this purpose are often lacking worldwide. In this study, a methodology which can be used to estimate irrigation amounts over a pilot area in Spain by exploiting remotely sensed soil moisture is proposed. Two high-resolution DISPATCH (DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale CHange) downscaled soil moisture products have been used: SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) at 1 km. The irrigation estimates have been obtained through the SM2RAIN algorithm, in which the evapotranspiration term has been improved to adequately reproduce the crop evapotranspiration over irrigated areas according to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) model. The experiment exploiting the SMAP data at 1 km represents the main work analyzed in this study and covered the period from January 2016 to September 2017. The experiment with the SMOS data at 1 km, for which a longer time series is available, allowed the irrigation estimates to be extended back to 2011. For both of the experiments carried out, the proposed method performed well in reproducing the magnitudes of the irrigation amounts that actually occurred in four of the five pilot irrigation districts. The SMAP experiment, for which a more detailed analysis was performed, also provided satisfactory results in representing the spatial distribution and the timing of the irrigation events. In addition, the investigation into which term of the SM2RAIN algorithm plays the leading role in determining the amount of water entering into the soil highlights the importance of correct representation of the evapotranspiration process.

Can We Use Satellite-Based Soil-Moisture Products at High Resolution to Investigate Land-Use Differences and Land–Atmosphere Interactions? A Case Study in the Savanna

The use of soil moisture (SM) measurements from satellites has grown in recent years, fostering the development of new products at high resolution. This opens the possibility of using them for certain applications that were normally carried out using in situ data. We investigated this hypothesis through two main analyses using two high-resolution satellite-based soil moisture (SBSM) products that combined microwave with thermal and optical data: (1) The Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DISPATCH) and, (2) The Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity-Barcelona Expert Center (SMOS-BEC Level 4). We used these products to analyse the SM differences among pixels with contrasting vegetation. This was done through the comparison of the SM measurements from satellites and the measurements simulated with a simple antecedent precipitation index (API) model, which did not account for the surface characteristics. Subsequently, the deviation of the SM from satellite with respect to the API model (bias) was analysed and compared for contrasting land use categories. We hypothesised that the differences in the biases of the varied categories could provide information regarding the water retention capacity associated with each type of vegetation. From the satellite measurements, we determined how the SM depended on the tree cover, i.e., the denser the tree cover, the higher the SM. However, in winter periods with light rain events, the tree canopy could dampen the moistening of the soil through interception and conducted higher SM in the open areas. This evolution of the SM differences that depended on the characteristics of each season was observed both from satellite and from in situ measurements taken beneath a tree and in grass on the savanna landscape. The agreement between both types of measurements highlighted the potential of the SBSM products to investigate the SM of each type of vegetation. We found that the results were clearer for DISPATCH, whose data was not smoothed spatially as it was in SMOS-BEC. We also tested whether the relationships between SM and evapotranspiration could be investigated using satellite data. The answer to this question was also positive but required removing the unrealistic high-frequency SM oscillations from the satellite data using a low pass filter. This improved the performance scores of the products and the agreement with the results from the in situ data. These results demonstrated the possibility of using SM data from satellites to substitute ground measurements for the study of land–atmosphere interactions, which encourages efforts to improve the quality and resolution of these measurements.

Multi-scale statistical properties of disaggregated SMOS soil moisture products in Australia

Soil moisture has a strong impact on climate, hydrology and agronomy at different space scales, from the continent global scale to the local watershed. Passive microwave sensors, like SMOS satellite (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity), allow a global study of soil moisture on the entire globe. To have access to kilometric variability, disaggregation algorithms have been developed, such as the Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DisPATCh). This method improves the space resolution of SMOS soil moisture from 40 km to 1 km. To do this, it combines coarse-scale (≈40 km) SMOS products with fine-scale (≈1 km) optical/thermal data. Validation studies on specific scales showed the potential of DisPATCh to enhance the spatio-temporal correlation of disaggregated SM with in-situ measurements, under low-vegetated semi-arid regions. Although the efficiency of the method was revealed in these regions, no studies fully explored its statistical behavior over a continuum of space scales. In this paper, we studied and compared the spatial multi-scale statistics of the different input and output datasets involved in DisPATCh downscaling. To do this, we applied spectral and multifractal analysis on the respective products for the region of southeastern Australia, from June to December 2010. Fractal and multifractal properties (in the framework of the Universal Multifractal model) were observed on inputs of DisPATCh (SMOS soil moisture, MODIS vegetation indices and surface temperature), which confirmed and completed some results reported in existing literature. For the output disaggregated soil moisture, two scaling regimes were observed, with a transition scale observed at about ten kilometers. Considering spectral analysis, at large scales (> 10 km), disaggregated soil moisture was found to have the same scaling as the original SMOS soil moisture. On finer scales (< 10 km), a different behavior was noticed, with a higher value of the slope of the power spectrum. The same scale break was detected on statistical moments, showing that both spectral and multifractal properties of DisPATCh soil moisture are characterized by this twofold scaling signature.

Stepwise Disaggregation of SMAP Soil Moisture at 100 m Resolution Using Landsat-7/8 Data and a Varying Intermediate Resolution

Global soil moisture (SM) products are currently available from passive microwave sensors at typically 40 km spatial resolution. Although recent efforts have been made to produce 1 km resolution data from the disaggregation of coarse scale observations, the targeted resolution of available SM data is still far from the requirements of fine-scale hydrological and agricultural studies. To fill the gap, a new disaggregation scheme of Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) data is proposed at 100 m resolution by using the disaggregation based on physical and theoretical scale change (DISPATCH) algorithm. The main objectives of this paper is (i) to implement DISPATCH algorithm at 100 m resolution using SMAP SM and Landsat land surface temperature and vegetation index data and (ii) to investigate the usefulness of an intermediate spatial resolution (ISR) between the SMAP 36 km resolution and the targeted 100 m resolution. The sequential disaggregation approach from 36 km to ISR (ranging from 1 km to 30 km) and from ISR to 100 m resolution is evaluated over 22 irrigated field crops in central Morocco using in-situ SM measurements collected from January to May 2016. The lowest root mean square difference (RMSD) between the 100 m resolution disaggregated and in-situ SM is obtained when the ISR is around 10 km. Therefore, the two-step disaggregation is more efficient than the direct disaggregation from SMAP to 100 m resolution. Moreover, we propose a moving average window algorithm to increase the accuracy in the 100 m resolution SM as well as to reduce the low-resolution boxy artifacts on disaggregated images. The correlation coefficient between 100 m resolution disaggregated and in situ SM ranges between 0.5–0.9 for four out of the six extensive sampling dates. This methodology relies solely on remote sensing data and can be easily implemented to monitor SM at a high spatial resolution over irrigated regions.

The value of satellite remote sensing soil moisture data and the DISPATCH algorithm in irrigation fields

Abstract. Soil moisture measurements are needed in a large number of applications such as hydro-climate approaches, watershed water balance management and irrigation scheduling. Nowadays, different kinds of methodologies exist for measuring soil moisture. Direct methods based on gravimetric sampling or time domain reflectometry (TDR) techniques measure soil moisture in a small volume of soil at few particular locations. This typically gives a poor description of the spatial distribution of soil moisture in relatively large agriculture fields. Remote sensing of soil moisture provides widespread coverage and can overcome this problem but suffers from other problems stemming from its low spatial resolution. In this context, the DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale CHange (DISPATCH) algorithm has been proposed in the literature to downscale soil moisture satellite data from 40 to 1 km resolution by combining the low-resolution Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite soil moisture data with the high-resolution Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and land surface temperature (LST) datasets obtained from a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. In this work, DISPATCH estimations are compared with soil moisture sensors and gravimetric measurements to validate the DISPATCH algorithm in an agricultural field during two different hydrologic scenarios: wet conditions driven by rainfall events and wet conditions driven by local sprinkler irrigation. Results show that the DISPATCH algorithm provides appropriate soil moisture estimates during general rainfall events but not when sprinkler irrigation generates occasional heterogeneity. In order to explain these differences, we have examined the spatial variability scales of NDVI and LST data, which are the input variables involved in the downscaling process. Sample variograms show that the spatial scales associated with the NDVI and LST properties are too large to represent the variations of the average soil moisture at the site, and this could be a reason why the DISPATCH algorithm does not work properly in this field site.

Disaggregation of SMOS Soil Moisture to 100 m Resolution Using MODIS Optical/Thermal and Sentinel-1 Radar Data: Evaluation over a Bare Soil Site in Morocco

The 40 km resolution SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) soil moisture, previously disaggregated at a 1 km resolution using the DISPATCH (DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale CHange) method based on MODIS optical/thermal data, is further disaggregated to 100 m resolution using Sentinel-1 backscattering coefficient (σ°). For this purpose, three distinct radar-based disaggregation methods are tested by linking the spatio-temporal variability of σ° and soil moisture data at the 1 km and 100 m resolution. The three methods are: (1) the weight method, which estimates soil moisture at 100 m resolution at a certain time as a function of σ° ratio (100 m to 1 km resolution) and the 1 km DISPATCH products of the same time; (2) the regression method which estimates soil moisture as a function of σ° where the regression parameters (e.g., intercept and slope) vary in space and time; and (3) the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) method, which estimates 100 m resolution soil moisture from the cumulative probability of 100 m resolution backscatter and the maximum to minimum 1 km resolution (DISPATCH) soil moisture difference. In each case, disaggregation results are evaluated against in situ measurements collected between 1 January 2016 and 11 October 2016 over a bare soil site in central Morocco. The determination coefficient (R2) between 1 km resolution DISPATCH and localized in situ soil moisture is 0.31. The regression and CDF methods have marginal effect on improving the DISPATCH accuracy at the station scale with a R2 between remotely sensed and in situ soil moisture of 0.29 and 0.34, respectively. By contrast, the weight method significantly improves the correlation between remotely sensed and in situ soil moisture with a R2 of 0.52. Likewise, the soil moisture estimates show low root mean square difference with in situ measurements (RMSD= 0.032 m3 m−3).

NIR-Red Spectra-Based Disaggregation of SMAP Soil Moisture to 250 m Resolution Based on OzNet in Southeastern Australia

To meet the demand of regional hydrological and agricultural applications, a new method named near infrared-red (NIR-red) spectra-based disaggregation (NRSD) was proposed to perform a disaggregation of Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) products from 36 km to 250 m resolution. The NRSD combined proposed normalized soil moisture index (NSMI) with SMAP data to obtain 250 m resolution soil moisture mapping. This NRSD method was validated with the data from in situ OzNet network in May and September 2015. Results showed that NRSD performed a decent downscaling (root-mean-square error (RMSE) = 0.04 m3/m3 and 0.12 m3/m3 in May and September, respectively). Based on the validation, it was found that the proposed NSMI was a new alternative indicator for denoting the heterogeneity of soil moisture at sub-kilometer scales. Attributed to the excellent performance of the NSMI, NRSD has a higher overall accuracy, finer spatial representation within SMAP pixels and wider applicable scope on usability tests for land cover, vegetation density and drought condition than the disaggregation based on physical and theoretical scale change (DISPATCH) has at 250 m resolution. This revealed that the NRSD method is expected to provide soil moisture mapping at 250-resolution for large-scale hydrological and agricultural studies.

A combination of DISPATCH downscaling algorithm with CLASS land surface scheme for soil moisture estimation at fine scale during cloudy days

Abstract The main objective of this study is to propose and evaluate a new approach to overcome the major limitation of downscaling methods based on optical/thermal data, particularly the DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DISPATCH) algorithm. Data collected over an agricultural site located in Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada) during the SMAP Validation Experiments 2012 (SMAPVEX12) field campaign were used. At this site, SMOS soil moisture estimates showed a relatively good correlation for both AM and PM overpasses (R ≥ 0.67), but with a significant underestimation (bias ≈ − 0.10 m3/m3), when compared to ground data. SMOS soil moisture data also showed a significant sensitivity to rainfall events. The DISPATCH algorithm was used to downscale bias-corrected SMOS soil moisture data over the study area for the cloud-free days during SMAPVEX12. Compared to ground data, DISPATCH performed well, especially with the soil evaporative efficiency (SEE) linear model (R = 0.81, bias = − 0.01 m3/m3, RMSE = 0.05 m3/m3), which slightly outperformed the SEE non-linear model (R = 0.72, bias = − 0.01 m3/m3, RMSE = 0.06 m3/m3). For both models, the accuracy of the downscaling soil moisture is inversely proportional to the absolute value of soil moisture. For cloudy days, a new operational downscaling approach was proposed. It consists of combining the soil moisture simulations of the Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CLASS) with DISPATCH-downscaled soil moisture during cloud-free days in order to provide estimates of temporally continuous series of soil moisture at 1 km resolution. Compared to ground soil moisture data, the results indicated the high potential of our approach to retrieve soil moisture at 1 km resolution during cloudy days (R = 0.80, bias = − 0.01 m3/m3, RMSE = 0.07 m3/m3).

SMOS disaggregated soil moisture product at 1 km resolution: Processor overview and first validation results

Abstract The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission provides surface soil moisture (SM) maps at a mean resolution of ~ 50 km. However, agricultural applications (irrigation, crop monitoring) and some hydrological applications (floods and modeling of small basins) require higher resolution SM information. In order to overcome this spatial mismatch, a disaggregation algorithm called Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DISPATCH) combines higher-resolution data from optical/thermal sensors with the SM retrieved from microwave sensors like SMOS, producing higher-resolution SM as the output. A DISPATCH-based processor has been implemented for the whole globe (emerged lands) in the Centre Aval de Traitement des Donnees SMOS (CATDS), the French data processing center for SMOS Level 3 products. This new CATDS Level-4 Disaggregation processor (C4DIS) generates SM maps at 1 km resolution. This paper provides an overview of the C4DIS architecture, algorithms and output products. Differences with the original DISPATCH prototype are explained and major processing parameters are presented. The C4DIS SM product is compared against L3 and in situ SM data during a one year period over the Murrumbidgee catchment and the Yanco area (Australia), and during a four and a half year period over the Little Washita and the Walnut Gulch watersheds (USA). The four validation areas represent highly contrasting climate regions with different landscape properties. According to this analysis, the C4DIS SM product improves the spatio-temporal correlation with in situ measurements in the semi-arid regions with substantial SM spatial variability mainly driven by precipitation and irrigation. In sub-humid regions like the Little Washita watershed, the performance of the algorithm is poor except for summer, as result of the weak moisture-evaporation coupling. Disaggregated products do not succeed to have and additional benefit in the Walnut Gulch watershed, which is also semi-arid but with well-drained soils that are likely to cancel the spatial contrast needed by DISPATCH. Although further validation studies are still needed to better assess the performance of DISPATCH in a range of surface and atmospheric conditions, the new C4DIS product is expected to provide satisfying results over regions having medium to high SM spatial variability.

DisPATCh as a tool to evaluate coarse-scale remotely sensed soil moisture using localized in situ measurements: Application to SMOS and AMSR-E data in Southeastern Australia

Validating coarse-scale satellite soil moisture data still represents a big challenge, notably due to the large mismatch existing between the spatial resolution (> 10km) of microwave radiometers and the representativeness scale (several m) of localized in situ measurements. This study aims to examine the potential of DisPATCh (Disaggregation based on Physical and Theoretical scale Change) for validating SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) and AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth observation system) level-3 soil moisture products. The ∽40–50km resolution SMOS and AMSR-E data are disaggregated at 1km resolution over the Murrumbidgee catchment in Southeastern Australia during a one year period in 2010–2011, and the satellite products are compared with the in situ measurements of 38 stations distributed within the study area. It is found that disaggregation improves the mean difference, correlation coefficient and slope of the linear regression between satellite and in situ data in 77%, 92% and 94% of cases, respectively. Nevertheless, the downscaling efficiency is lower in winter than during the hotter months when DisPATCh performance is optimal. Consistently, better results are obtained in the semi-arid than in a temperate zone of the catchment. In the semi-arid Yanco region, disaggregation in summer increases the correlation coefficient from 0.63 to 0.78 and from 0.42 to 0.71 for SMOS and AMSR-E in morning overpasses and from 0.37 to 0.63 and from 0.47 to 0.73 for SMOS and AMSR-E in afternoon overpasses, respectively. DisPATCh has strong potential in low vegetated semi-arid areas where it can be used as a tool to evaluate coarse-scale remotely sensed soil moisture by explicitly representing the sub-pixel variability.

Disaggregation of SMOS soil moisture over the Canadian Prairies

In this study, we used the Disaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale Change (DISPATCH) algorithm under very wet soil conditions in Western Canada for the disaggregation of coarse resolution 40-km soil moisture derived from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. The algorithm relies on the Soil Evaporative Efficiency (SEE), which was estimated using the 1-km resolution data from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer (MODIS). The study aimed to: (i) evaluate DISPATCH under wet soil conditions, (ii) test the linearity/non-linearity of the relationship between soil moisture and SEE, and (iii) propose a more robust procedure to calibrate the SEE model under very wet soil conditions. The disaggregated soil moisture values were compared to 0–5 cm in situ measurements and the soil moisture derived from the L-MEB (L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere) model from airborne brightness temperature at 1.4 GHz collected during the Canadian Experiment for Soil Moisture in 2010 (CanEx-SM10) field campaign. The results show a correlation between 0.7 and 0.8 and bias values ~ 0 m 3 /m 3 . The DISPATCH algorithm shows better disaggregation results under very wet soil conditions when a non-linear relationship is considered between SEE and soil moisture instead of a linear model. This is mainly due to the small variability of surface temperature inside the area covered by the SMOS pixel under very wet soil conditions, and the difficulty in accurately estimating the maximum soil temperature ( Ts max ), which is a driving factor for SEE. A sensitivity analysis was conducted and it shows that the linear model performs well only if Ts max can be determined more accurately. The possibility to determine Ts max using high resolution MODIS data over a larger area than the SMOS pixel is examined and discussed in the paper. • We validate DISPATCH downscaling algorithm under very wet soil condition. • Data from CanEX-SM10 field campaign were used. • Linear and non-linear models linking SM to SEE are compared. • Better results are found DISPATCH coupled to the non-linear model. • With an improved Ts max value, DISPATCH results are better with the linear model.