Soil Moisture Active Passive Validation Experiment 2008 (SMAPVEX08)

The Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission (SMAP) is currently addressing issues related to the development and selection of soil moisture retrieval algorithms. Several forums have identified a number of specific questions that require supporting field experiments. Addressing these issues as soon as possible would contribute to mission definition and algorithms design and selection. Specific objectives include an evaluation of how well do new alternative radio frequency interference (RFI) suppression techniques under consideration for SMAP work over RFI contaminated land areas, providing more robust sets of concurrent passive and active L-band observational data including temporal change for algorithm development and validation, understanding the scaling of high resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to lower resolution radar data of SMAP, and a more thorough evaluation of less studied land covers. A series of aircraft-based flights (SMAP Validation Experiment 2008-SMAPVEX08) was conducted on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Delaware in the fall of 2008. Several aircraft carrying prototypes of the SMAP instrumentation (combined active and passive microwave) were flown concurrent with ground sampling. Flights were designed to provide a comparison of the various instrument calibrations. Preliminary results will be presented.