A SMAP validation sudy in the Canadian boreal forest
Abstract
The boreal forest, or Taiga, is one of the world's largest biomes. It is undergoing rapid changes due to anthropogenic modifications, insect infestations, and changes in climate. Water availability, and importantly soil moisture, is critically important for many of these processes. Furthermore, it dramatically impacts wildfire risk within this region; wildfires have been shown to be increasing in this region, dramatically impacting local economies, climate and environment. Therefore, the monitoring of soil moisture within this region is of great importance.With respect to the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) missions, very few validation studies have focused on this biome. In the spring of 2018, a network of 17 soil moisture monitoring stations were installed within a SMAP pixel in the boreal forest region of central Saskatchewan, Canada. The unique soil characteristics of boreal regions, that is not generally applicable to the majority of other biomes, is the presence of an organic soil layer of variable depth which lies above the mineral layer. Here we are interested in the sensitivity of soil moisture within each of these soil layers to the SMAP and SMOS soil moisture products. To address this question, at each location we have installed soil moisture monitoring probes within the organic layer (at 5cm below the surface) and within the mineral layer (at 5cm below the organic/mineral layer interface). Although we are currently developing a site specific calibration to convert the measured soil dielectric permittivity to a soil moisture estimate, preliminary results, that relate the in situ measured dielectric permittivity to the SMAP soil moisture product (9 km SMAP level 2 single channel algorithm), show stronger correlation relationships to the upper organic layer (Pearson r = 0.49) than the underlying mineral soil layer (r =0.33). Relationships to the SMOS soil moisture product will also be presented.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H54E..02B
- Keywords:
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- 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1855 Remote sensing;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1866 Soil moisture;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4262 Ocean observing systems;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL