Passive/Active microwave soil moisture retrieval and disaggregation using SMAPVEX12 Data

SMAPVEX12 is a pre-launch field campaign for evaluating and testing the soil moisture retrievals retrieved from the SMAP project. During this experiment, airborne microwave observations from PALS radiometer and radar: brightness temperature and radar backscatter, as well as ground measurements were acquired. In this study, the remote sensing soil moisture was retrieved from SMAPVEX12 PALS radiometer L-band ( 6GHz) brightness temperature at high altitude flight. The PALS soil moisture was then aggregated and compared with PALS radar backscatter coefficient to generate high spatial resolution microwave soil moisture in change. The R-2 values of PALS soil moisture retrieval validation range from 0.407-0.881, indicating good accuracy of soil moisture retrieval. The R2 values of comparison between aggregated PALS Delta theta and PALS Delta sigma range from 0.492-0.805, while the downscaled Delta theta validation range from 0.128-0.383.