RETRIEVING REGIONAL SOIL MOISTURE OVER CHINA FROM SSM/I MICROWAVE DATA

Remote sensing of soil moisture by microwave radiometry has been a subject of intensive studies in the past two decades. Following the studies done before, a new approach to retrieve surface layer soil moisture is accomplished, in which the passive microwave data from SSM/I, as well as AVHRR and ground observation data are used to retrieve surface microwave emissivity. The retrieved emissivity is further used to derive surface soil moisture. For getting the information about the mixed-pixel, the surface temperature, canopy percentage and surface roughness are involved, and the microwave emissivity of soil element in a pixel can retrieved. The emissivity of soil component in one pixel is better than average emissivity over the whole pixel when retrieval the surface moisture. The physical technique is also retrieved the surface microwave emissivity and surface moisture.