Soil moisture estimation using satellite remote sensing and numerical weather prediction model for hydrological applications

• Main Author: Al-Shrafany, Deleen Mohammed Saleh
• Published: University of Bristol 2012
• Subjects: 631.432
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.574260

Soil moisture is an important variable in hydrological modelling used for real time flood forecasting and water resources management. However, it is a very challenging task to measure soil moisture over a hydrological catchment using conventional in-situ sensors. Remote sensing is gaining popularity due to its large coverage suitable for soil moisture measurement at a catchment scale albeit there are still many knowledge gaps to be filled in. This thesis focuses on investigating soil moisture estimation from remote sensing satellite and land surface model (LSM) coupled with a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model. A hydrological-based approach has been conducted to assess/evaluate the estimated soil moisture using event-based water balance and Probability Distributed Model (PDM). An Advance Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR) and a physically- based Land Parameters Retrieval Model (LPRM) have been used to retrieve surface soil moisture over the sturdy area. The LPRM vegetation and roughness parameters have been empirically calibrated by a new approach proposed in this thesis. The relevant parameters are calibrated on the hydrological model through achieving the best correlation between the observation-based catchment storage and the retrieved surface soil moisture. The development of the land surface model coupled with the NWP model is used to estimate soil moisture at different combinations of soil layers. The optimal combination of the top two layers is found to have the best performance when compared to the catchment water storage. Regression-based mathematical models have been derived to predict the catchment storage from the estimated soil moisture based on both satellite remote sensing and the LSM-NWP model. Three schemes are proposed to examine the behaviour of soil moisture products over different seasons in order to find the appropriate formulas in different scenarios. Finally, weighted coefficients and arithmetic average data fusion methods are explored to integrate two independent soil moisture products from the AMSR-E satellite and the LSM-NWP. It has been found that the merged output is a significant improvement over their individual estimates. The implementation of the fusion technique has provided a new opportunity for information integration from satellite and NWP model. Keywords: Soil moisture, Satellite remote sensing, satellite, land surface model, NWP model, rainfall-runoff model, water balance, PDM model