Title
Estimation of surface soil moisture in irrigated lands by assimilation of landsat vegetation indices, surface energy balance products, and Relevance Vector Machines
Date Issued
01 January 2016
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Utah State University
Publisher(s)
MDPI AG
Abstract
Spatial surface soil moisture can be an important indicator of crop conditions on farmland, but its continuous estimation remains challenging due to coarse spatial and temporal resolution of existing remotely-sensed products. Furthermore, while preceding research on soil moisture using remote sensing (surface energy balance, weather parameters, and vegetation indices) has demonstrated a relationship between these factors and soil moisture, practical continuous spatial quantification of the latter is still unavailable for use in water and agricultural management. In this study, a methodology is presented to estimate volumetric surface soil moisture by statistical selection from potential predictors that include vegetation indices and energy balance products derived from satellite (Landsat) imagery and weather data as identified in scientific literature. This methodology employs a statistical learning machine called a Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) to identify and relate the potential predictors to soil moisture by means of stratified cross-validation and forward variable selection. Surface soil moisture measurements from irrigated agricultural fields in Central Utah in the 2012 irrigation season were used, along with weather data, Landsat vegetation indices, and energy balance products. The methodology, data collection, processing, and estimation accuracy are presented and discussed.
Volume
8
Issue
4
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Otras ingenierías y tecnologías
Ciencia del suelo
Otras ciencias agrícolas
Subjects
DOI
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84965172866
Source
Water (Switzerland)
ISSN of the container
20734441
Sponsor(s)
This project was supported by the Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University (Mineral Lease Funds WR-2188). Historical and real-time hourly weather data for the Lower Sevier River Basin were graciously provided by the Community Environmental Monitoring Program (Nevada). The authors also thank Roger Hansen at the Provo, Utah, office of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; James Walker, the Lower Sevier Basin Commissioner; and the Sevier River Water Users Association for their continued assistance and support in this research.Appreciation goes to Carri Richards for her timely help in editing the paper. Landsat data are distributed by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), located at USGS/EROS, Sioux Falls, SD. http://lpdaac.usgs.gov. Computer, storage, and other resources from the High Performance Computing-Division of Research Computing in the Office of Research and Graduate Studies at Utah State University are gratefully acknowledged.
Sources of information:
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