Scientific objectives
The general objective is to contribute to the validation of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) soil moisture estimation and brightness temperature products, and the pre-launch validation of Soil Moisture Active & Passive (SMAP) mission over agricultural and forested sites.
Specific objectives:
- Comparative analysis of L-Band microwave data along with field measurements
- Development of soil moisture retrieval algorithms from passive and active microwave data (SMOS, RADARSAT-2, ALOS-PalSAR, L-Band airborne data from EC’s radiometer and NASA’s UAVSAR)
- Scaling methodologies for SMOS coarse resolution data
- Assimilation of SMOS data in land surface systems to improve land surface initial conditions provided to environmental forecast models
