ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
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Articles | Volume IV-3/W2-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-3-W2-2020-89-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-3-W2-2020-89-2020
29 Oct 2020
 | 29 Oct 2020

FIRST SURFACE SOIL DRYING VALIDATION IN A PRODUCTIVE AREA IN CENTRAL ARGENTINA

L. Cappelletti, R. Ruscica, M. M. Salvia, A. Sörensson, E. Jobbágy, N. Gattinoni, P. Spennemann, and M. Fernandez-Long

Keywords: Surface Soil Moisture, dry-down time scale, SMOS, In-situ, central Argentina, seasonal analysis

Abstract. Surface soil moisture (SSM) dry-downs have been employed to compare independent data sources on the dynamics of water in soils, including such remote sensing, land surface models and in-situ measurements, which are often difficult to contrast with standard methodologies. The soil drying approach summarizes the soil response to climate as well as surface conditions during a dry period. In this work it is estimated as the SSM e-folding decay, named as dry-down time scale. This is the first assessment over eastern Cordoba, Argentina, a region with a very high cultivated land fraction that was subject of important agricultural changes in the last decades. SMOS SSM product (derived from microwave measurements at L band) is validated with in-situ SSM measurements provided by the National Commission for Space Activities during 2012–2018. Both products agree in showing that the austral spring season has the largest number of dry-down events for the whole period. The dry-down time scale sensitivity to the chosen detection method as well as the data sampling frequency is larger in summer than in spring. A faster soil drying in SMOS than in In-situ SSM is found, likely as a consequence of the shallower sensing depth of the first. This dependency seems to be more important than the temporal sampling frequency in the SSM data.