Estimating Soil Hydraulic Parameters Using Passive Microwave Data

Useful quantitative information about soil properties may be obtained by calibrating energy and moisture balance models with remotely sensed data. In this study, a soil physics model solves heat and moisture flux equations in the soil profile and is driven by the surface energy balance. Model-generated surface temperature and soil moisture and temperature profiles are then used in a microwave emission model to predict the soil brightness temperature. The model hydraulic parameters are varied until the predicted temperatures agree with the remotely sensed measurements. Using this method, values were estimated for hydraulic conductivity, matric potential and soil moisture at saturation, and a soil texture parameter. The conductivity agreed with values measured with an infiltration ring and the other parameters agreed with values in the literature.