Soil moisture observation under different vegetation conditions by GBMR

Heterogeneity is one of the critical issues of passive microwave remote sensing of land surface hydrological parameters (LSHPs), soil moisture, surface temperature, water content of vegetation etc., due to the large foot print of microwave radiometers, especially at low frequency. A combination of different foot print sensors, spaceborne, airborne and ground-based, contributes to understanding of effects of land surface heterogeneity and to algorithm validation of LSHPs. The potentials of TRMM TMI and a possible combination of ADEOS-II AMSR and EOS-PEVI, “AQUA”, AMSR-E are expected to play important roles in diurnal cycle studies of land-atmosphere interaction. There are few data sets of the diurnal cycle of LSHPs observed by microwave radiometers due to lack of field observations. A ground-based microwave radiometer (GBMR) was deployed in the SGP99 to respond to the above the two scientific requirements