Algorithm Development and Validation of Liquid Water Content Mapping for Mixed Terrain of Snow and Soil in Montana Using Space-borne Active Microwave Data

This research program is directed at developing and validating an algorithm, based upon active microwave data, that will be used to create snow and soil moisture maps of Montana's drought stricken regions.  By taking advantage of microwave's ability to penetrate clouds and acquire data day or night, we seek to provide farmers and ranchers with liquid water content data critical to decisions related to range management such as irrigation and fertilizer application scheduling  The ultimate goal is to provide farmers and ranchers with a tool to reduce pumping and fertilizer costs by limiting over watering and excessive fertilizing.  The proposed algorithm will be based upon recent developments by the PI and his research group that combine an Integral Equation Model (Fung et al., 1992; Fung, 1994), Rayleigh scattering approximation, empirical soil moisture data, a dielectric constant model (Topp et al., 1980; Rial & Han, 2000) and a snow spherical model (Sihvola, 1999).  Using these techniques the algorithm will derive a soil moisture and wetness distribution of Montana from space borne Synthetic Aperture Radar backscattering coefficient data.  Separation of snow from soil will be based on snow cover products such as MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 8-day products (Zhou, et al., 2005).  The validation of the algorithm will be completed using the long-term in situ soil moisture data from stations of the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN) of the Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRCS).  For instance, soil moisture data from the Fort Assiniboine station of Hill County in Montana will be fully used for the algorithm validation (data on the public domain http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/scan).  The results of this study will likely lead to more extensive near-real-time soil moisture mapping projects.

Contact Information

Mail:	Xiaobing Zhou
	Department of Geophysical Engineering
	Montana Tech of the University of Montana
	Butte, MT 59701