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Surface moisture and satellite microwave observations in semiarid southern Africa
Author(s) -
Owe M.,
Griend A. A.,
Chang A. T. C.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/91wr02765
Subject(s) - environmental science , emissivity , water content , radiometer , satellite , vegetation (pathology) , microwave , brightness temperature , remote sensing , moisture , microwave radiometer , radiometry , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geology , geography , medicine , physics , geotechnical engineering , engineering , pathology , quantum mechanics , aerospace engineering , optics
Nimbus 7 scanning multichannel microwave radiometer 6.6‐GHz passive microwave data were studied in relation to large‐scale soil moisture estimates over a 3‐year period in southeastern Botswana. An extensive data base of weekly surface soil moisture measurements was used with meteorological data to estimate pixel average soil moisture on a daily basis. The influence of the vegetation canopy on the surface emissivity was studied by partitioning the data set into classes on the basis of the normalized difference vegetation index. After correcting for the vegetation optical depth, a correlation of r = 0.84 was established between the normalized brightness temperature observations and surface soil moisture for the 3‐year period.