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Field observations of soil moisture variability across scales
Open accessAbstract
In this study, over 36,000 ground‐based soil moisture measurements collected during the SGP97, SGP99, SMEX02, and SMEX03 field campaigns were analyzed to characterize the behavior of soil moisture variability across scales. The field campaigns were conducted in Oklahoma and Iowa in the central USA. The Oklahoma study region is sub‐humid with moderately rolling topography, while the Iowa study region is humid with low‐relief topography. The relationship of soil moisture standard deviation, skewness and the coefficient of variation versus mean moisture content was explored at six distinct extent scales, ranging from 2.5 m to 50 km. Results showed that variability generally increases with extent scale. The standard deviation increased from 0.036 cm 3/cm 3 at the 2.5‐m scale to 0.071 cm 3/cm 3 at the 50‐km scale. The log standard deviation of soil moisture increased linearly with the log extent scale, from 16 m to 1.6 km, indicative of fractal scaling. The soil moisture standard deviation versus mean moisture content exhibited a convex upward relationship at the 800‐m and 50‐km scales, with maximum values at mean moisture contents of roughly 0.17 cm 3/cm 3 and 0.19 cm 3/cm 3, respectively. An empirical model derived from the observed behavior of soil moisture variability was used to estimate uncertainty in the mean moisture content for a fixed number of samples at the 800‐m and 50‐km scales, as well as the number of ground‐truth samples needed to achieve 0.05 cm 3/cm 3 and 0.03 cm 3/cm 3 accuracies. The empirical relationships can also be used to parameterize surface soil moisture variations in land surface and hydrological models across a range of scales. To our knowledge, this is the first study to document the behavior of soil moisture variability over this range of extent scales using ground‐based measurements. Our results will contribute not only to efficient and reliable satellite validation, but also to better utilization of remotely sensed soil moisture products for enhanced modeling and prediction.
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Cites
A Closed‐form Equation for Predicting the Hydraulic Conductivity of Unsaturated Soils
van Genuchten, M. T. (1980) · Soil Science Society of America Journal · doi:10.2136/sssaj1980.03615995004400050002x · Cited by 27,578
Cited by
On the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Soil Moisture at the Field Scale
Vereecken, H., Huisman, J. A., Pachepsky, Y., Montzka, C., van der Kruk, J., Bogena, H., Weihermüller, L., Herbst, M., Martinez, G., & Vanderborght, J. (2014) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2013.11.061 · Cited by 584
Zreda, M., Desilets, D., Ferré, T. P. A., & Scott, R. L. (2008) · Geophysical Research Letters · doi:10.1029/2008gl035655 · Cited by 594
Salas, J. D., Govindaraju, R. S., Anderson, M., Arabi, M., Francés, F., Suarez, W., Lavado-Casimiro, W. S., & Green, T. R. (2014) · Modern Water Resources Engineering · doi:10.1007/978-1-62703-595-8_1 · Cited by 290
The Value of SMAP for Long-Term Soil Moisture Estimation With the Help of Deep Learning
Fang, K., Pan, M., & Shen, C. (2019) · IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing · doi:10.1109/tgrs.2018.2872131 · Cited by 186
Metadata
- Authors
- Famiglietti, J. S., Ryu, D., Berg, A. A., Rodell, M., & Jackson, T. J.
- Venue
- Water Resources Research
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2008-01
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 0043-1397 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-7973
- OpenAlex
- W2130746770
- Cited by
- 606
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 19.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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