Improving Passive Microwave Soil Moisture Retrievals Using RADARSAT Constellation Mission Data

About the Project

Accurate soil moisture products would have important benefits for improved predictions related to agriculture, weather and streamflow. Currently, global estimates of soil moisture are available from several satellite missions including NASA's soil moisture active passive mission (SMAP). Validation of these products over Canada has resulted in variable success. Over agricultural regions the satellite derived soil moisture product from SMAP is considered accurate, however results for northern regions were less promising. This research will examine opportunities to improve these soil moisture products. Areas we will focus on for improvement of these retrievals include: separating the impact of vegetation emission from soil emission to further isolate the soil moisture response and reducing the impact of inundated surfaces on the soil moisture retrievals. For each of these applications we will use data from the recently launched RADARSAT-Constellation mission (RCM) for high resolution observations of vegetation properties and saturated features. Finally we will investigate ways to integrate RCM and SMAP data to produce a high resolution soil moisture map over Canada. This research will form several research projects suitable for the training of new scientists with interest in using satellite data for environmental observations and modeling.