This paper examines the potential of scatterometer data from ERS satellites for improving hydrological simulations in both gauged and ungauged catchments. We compare the soil moisture dynamics simulated by a semidistributed hydrologic model in 320 Austrian catchments with the soil moisture dynamics inferred from the satellite data. The most apparent differences occur in the Alpine areas. Assimi...

[1] Characterization of the space-time variability of soil moisture is important for land surface and climate studies. Here we develop an analytical model to investigate how, at the dry-end of the soil moisture range, the main characteristics of the soil moisture field (spatial mean and variability, steady state distribution) depend on the intermittent character of low intensity rain storms. Ou...

A number of automated techniques for point measurement of soil moisture content have been developed to an operational level over the past few decades. While each of those techniques have been individually evaluated by the thermogravimetric (oven drying and weighing) method, typically under laboratory conditions, there have been few studies which have made a direct comparison between the various...

In situ soil moisture measurements are invaluable for calibrating and validating land surface models and satellite-based soil moisture retrievals. On a worldwide basis the number of meteorological networks measuring soil moisture is still limited and their data lack standardization of technique and protocol. In response to this, the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) was initiated to se...

Soil moisture is an important control over atmospheric evolution, since it controls the partition of incoming radiation into latent and sensible heating. To accurately model these land surface fluxes, atmospheric models must ultimately have accurate soil moisture fields. Yet soil moisture is typically initialised indirectly in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, frequently resulting in u...

Field measurement of soil moisture is undertaken traditionally using point based measurement techniques such as neutron probes or time domain reflectrometry (TDR). Recently, a new technique has been developed that can be used to derive soil moisture at larger spatial scales by measuring neutrons that are generated by cosmic rays within the air and soil, and emitted back into the atmosphere. A ...

The upcoming Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission of the European Space Agency will be the first satellite dedicated to the measurement of soil moisture. It will measure soil moisture for the top 5 cm at a spatial resolution of 35 to 50 km. Comparison of the soil moisture data from SMOS with insitu monitoring network measurements across areas the size of a SMOS footprint will play a ...

The purpose of this study was to develop an approach to estimate soil surface parameters from C-band polarimetric SAR data in the case of bare agricultural soils. An inversion technique based on multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural networks was introduced. The neural networks were trained and validated on a noisy simulated dataset generated from the Integral Equation Model (IEM) on a wide range ...

There is a strong demand for soil moisture information in establishing efficient irrigation scheduling, climate change prediction, and sustainable land and water management. However, such data are not readily available with an appropriate accuracy or spatial and temporal resolution. Addressing the need for soil moisture at high resolution globally, the European Space Agency (ESA) has developed ...

—Surface roughness has a significant effect on the relationship between radar hackscattcr and soil moisture. In order to use cxistinR radar satellite data for soil moisture, roughness effects must be corrected. A technique is presented that utilises Ihe data bases from soil erosion sludies and soil moisture remote sensing investigations to provide firsl order estimates «f the roughness parameters.