A growing season land surface process/radiobrightness model for wheat-stubble in the Southern Great Plains

The authors´ point-scale Land Surface Process/Radiobrightness (LSP/R) model for a prairie grassland in the northern Great Plains was adapted to winter wheat-stubble within the region of the Southern Great Plains 1997 (SGP´97) Hydrology Experiment. The model maintains running estimates of near-surface soil moisture and stored water in soil and vegetation when forced by weather, and predicts the microwave brightness of the terrain. LSP/R model predictions were compared with the field observations recorded during SGP´97. The model captures canopy and soil temperatures very well, with the maximum mean and variance of the difference between the model and field temperatures being 1.06 K and 3.28 K², respectively. It yields reasonable predictions for the moisture in deeper layers of the soil, but its predictions for the moisture in the upper layers are low by ~2.3% by volume. These underpredictions of near-surface soil moisture result in higher H-pol brightnesses at 19 GHz than those observed