Envisat Asar Gm Soil Moisture for Applications in Africa and Australia

ScanSAR systems such as ENVISATs ASAR Global Mode allow monitoring of dynamic processes at medium resolution (1km). Hence they are especially useful for monitoring hydrologic processes such as soil moisture and inundation dynamics. Within the ESA DUE Tiger Innovator project SHARE (Soil Moisture for Hydrometeorological Applications) an operational monitoring scheme has been developed. As part of the Tiger initiative, it has been implemented first over the Southern African Development Community region (SADC). Within one year after the release of the final version numerous users from within Africa and all over the world have requested the datasets for applications such as water management (including catchment modeling), biodiversity, habitat modeling, soil erosion, carbon fluxes etc. A similar service has been setup for entire Australia and satisfactorily evaluated for water resources management purposes. In this paper we provide an overview of the use and validation of the soil moisture products within SHARE. Interannual variability (2005–2008) has been assessed for all months. The range of mean monthly soil moisture among the SADC countries was highest for Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique and most pronounced during the second half of the rainy season in February and March.