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Satellite Soil Moisture: Review of Theory and Applications in Water Resources

Water Resources Management volume 31, pages 3161–3176 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

Soil moisture (SM) plays an important role in the water and energy exchanges that occur in the terrestrial surface. Soil moisture can be retrieved at a larger scale by using the visible and InfraRed (IR) bands as well as through the microwave remote sensing. Because of very high importance of SM for variety of applications, there are now two dedicated microwave satellites in the Earth’s orbit for soil moisture retrieval from space. The first, Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite has been launched by the European Space Agency in November 2009 and second is Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in January 2015. In this review, brief background of soil moisture retrieval algorithms are presented with different applications in the area of water resources. The first section provides the introduction of the soil moisture, presents several in situ techniques for measurement of soil moisture and soil moisture retrieval algorithms from visible/IR and microwave remote sensing. Section 2 describes the satellite soil moisture applications in water resources.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the Design and Innovation Centre, Banaras Hindu University and Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology, India, for providing the necessary funding for this study.

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  1. Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    Prashant K. Srivastava

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Srivastava, P.K. Satellite Soil Moisture: Review of Theory and Applications in Water Resources. Water Resour Manage 31, 3161–3176 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1722-6

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Keywords

  • Soil moisture
  • SMOS
  • SMAP
  • Optical/infrared satellites
  • Soil moisture retrieval
  • Hydrological applications