Temporal and spatial resolution requirements for a soil moisture mission

Author

Walker, Jeffrey P. ; Houser, P.R.

Author_Institution

Hydrological Sci. Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

6

Abstract

The temporal and spatial resolution requirements for a soil moisture mission are addressed through a synthetic identical twin data assimilation study. Simulations were made for observations with various temporal resolutions (1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 days), and spatial resolutions (0.5, 6, 12 18, 30, 60 and 120 minutes of arc). It was found that daily observations of surface soil moisture achieved the best predictions of soil moisture and evapotranspiration, with the greatest impact of temporal resolution being for 1 to 5 days. It was also found that observations with a spatial resolution less than the model resolution produced the best results, with spatial resolutions greater than the model resolution yielding only a slight degradation

Keywords

evaporation; hydrological techniques; moisture; remote sensing; soil; transpiration; evapotranspiration; soil moisture mission; spatial resolution requirements; synthetic identical twin data assimilation study; temporal resolution requirements; Atmospheric modeling; Degradation; Land surface; Soil measurements; Soil moisture; Spatial resolution; Surface soil; Surface topography; Surface treatment; Wavelength measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2001. IGARSS '01. IEEE 2001 International

Conference_Location

Sydney, NSW

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7031-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2001.976040

Filename

976040