2015 GSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, USA (1-4 November 2015)

Paper No. 201-1
Presentation Time: 8:00 AM

METHODS OF VALIDATING THE SOIL MOISTURE ACTIVE PASSIVE(SMAP) MISSION USING USDA-ARS EXPERIMENTAL WATERSHEDS


COSH, Michael1, JACKSON, Thomas2, BINDLISH, Rajat2, COLLIANDER, Andreas3, CHAN, Steven3, DAS, Narendra3, YUEH, Simon3, BOSCH, David4, GOODRICH, David5 and PRUEGER, John H.6, (1)USDA-ARS, Hydrology & Remote Sensing Lab, Beltsville, MD 20705, (2)USDA-ARS, Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab, Beltsville, MD 20705, (3)NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109, (4)USDA-ARS, Southeast Watershed Research Lab, Tifton, GA 31794, (5)USDA-ARS, Southwest Watershed Research Center, Tucson, AZ 85719, (6)USDA-ARS, National Lab for Agriculture and the Environment, 2110 University Blvd, Ames, IA 50011-3120, Michael.Cosh@ARS.USDA.gov

The Soil Moisture Active Passive mission (SMAP) provides a global soil moisture product on a 36 km resolution for the near surface. This mission relies upon an international cooperative of in situ networks to provide ground truth references across a variety of landscapes. The USDA Agricultural Research Service operates several experimental watersheds as part of this project with distributed soil moisture networks, measuring soil moisture at a variety of depths including the 5 cm depth, which is critical for satellite validation. Comparisons of the in situ network estimates to the satellite products are ongoing, but initial results have shown a good correspondence between satellite estimates and the in situ soil moisture resources, once scaling functions are applied. The scaling methodologies for the in situ networks are reviewed.