Soilmoisture retrieval using thermal inertia method in Heihe River Basin, China

MODIS data and in situ data were used to establish a real thermal inertia model to retrieve soil thermal inertia of Heihe River Basin (HRB) and a soil thermal inertia-soil moisture model to calculate the soil moisture of the basin. Meanwhile, the data of two observation stations in the basin was used to validate the result of retrieval. The correlation coefficients of those between retrieved and observed at two stations were 0.853 and 0.917, respectively. The result shows the method meet the requirement of soil moisture inversion.