Improving passive microwave soil moisture retrievals using RADARSAT constellation mission data

准确的土壤湿度产品将对改善与农业、天气和河流有关的预测有重要的好处。目前，全球土壤湿度的估计可以从几个卫星任务中获得，包括美国宇航局的土壤湿度主动式被动任务（SMAP）。这些产品在加拿大的验证取得了不同程度的成功。在农业地区，卫星从SMAP获得的土壤湿度产品被认为是准确的，但在北方地区的结果不太乐观。拟议的研究将检查改善这些土壤水分产品的机会。我们将重点改进的方面包括：将植被排放的影响与土壤排放的影响分离开来，进一步隔离土壤水分响应，减少被淹没地表对土壤水分反演的影响。对于这些应用，我们将使用最近发射的RADARSAT-Constellation任务（RCM）的数据进行植被特性和饱和特征的高分辨率观测。最后，我们将研究如何整合RCM和SMAP数据，以产生高分辨率的加拿大土壤湿度地图。拟议的研究将形成几个研究项目，适合培训对使用卫星数据进行环境观测和建模感兴趣的新科学家。

Accurate soil moisture products would have important benefits for improved predictions related to agriculture, weather and streamflow.  Currently, global estimates of soil moisture are available from several satellite missions including NASA's soil moisture active passive mission (SMAP). Validation of these products over Canada has resulted in variable success. Over agricultural regions the satellite derived soil moisture product from SMAP is considered accurate, however results for northern regions were less promising.  The proposed research will examine opportunities to improve these soil moisture products.  Areas we will focus on for improvement of these retrievals include: separating the impact of vegetation emission from soil emission to further isolate the soil moisture response and reducing the impact of inundated surfaces on the soil moisture retrievals. For each of these applications we will use data from the recently launched RADARSAT-Constellation mission (RCM) for high resolution observations of vegetation properties and saturated features. Finally we will investigate ways to integrate RCM and SMAP data to produce a high resolution soil moisture map over Canada. The proposed research will form several research projects suitable for the training of new scientists with interest in using satellite data for environmental observations and modelling.