AN OVERVIEW OF THE MEASUREMENTS OF SOIL-MOISTURE AND MODELING OF MOISTURE FLUX IN FIFE

Measurements of soil moisture and calculations of moisture transfer in the soil medium and at the air-soil interface were conducted by a group of investigators over a 15-km by 15-km test site south of Manhattan, Kansas, during the First ISLSCP Field Experiment (FIFE) in 1987 and 1989. The measurements included intensive soil moisture sampling at the ground level and surveys at aircraft altitudes by several active and passive microwave sensors as well as a gamma radiation device. The calculations were based on a catchment-scale water balance model that is driven by spatially interpolated rainfalls and estimated potential evaporation. The results of this group effort are presented in the five papers in this section. They include discussions on the statistics of soil moisture variability within a pixel of a remote sensor, soil moisture measurements by impedance probes, the comparison of active and passive microwave sensing of surface soil moisture, the statistics of soil moisture estimation by a gamma-radiation technique, and the comparison of the calculated and measured latent heat fluxes at the catchment scale (4 km by 4 km).