This study reviews recent progress on soil moisture data assimilation. Data assimilation is a process of merging observations with a system dynamic model to provide an improved estimate of the states of the environment. The application of data assimilation in hydrology is relatively new, however, rapid progress has been made in the last decade or so with the available remotely sensed soil moist...

This is an update to the special section “Remote Sensing for Vadose Zone Hydrology—A Synthesis from the Vantage Point” [Vadose Zone Journal 12(3)]. Satellites (e.g., Soil Moisture Active Passive [SMAP] and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity [SMOS]) using passive microwave techniques, in particular at L-band frequency, have shown good promise for global mapping of near-surface (0–5-cm) soil moistu...

• Landslides can be predicted using empirical and probabilistic rainfall thresholds. Soil moisture is critical in slope stability as it affects the infiltration rate. used with conventional thresholds for better performance. Idukki (India) highly a susceptible landslide zone Western Ghats. Critical conditions, considering soil wetness are derived Idukki. triggered by heavy rains increasing numb...

The monitoring of both cold and warm season hydrologic processes in headwater watersheds is critical for accurate water resource monitoring in many alpine regions. This work presents a new method that explores the simultaneous use of remotely sensed surface soil moisture (SM) and snow depth (SD) retrievals to improve hydrological modeling in such areas. In particular, remotely sensed SM and SD ...

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Soil moisture satellite mission accuracy, repeat time and spatial resolution requirements are addressed through a numerical twin data assimilation study. Simulated soil moisture profile retrievals were made by assimilating near-surface soil moisture observations with various accuracy (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10%v/v standard deviation) repeat time (1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 days), and spatial r...

[1] This study presents a systematic and integrated analysis of the sensitivity of the available satellite observations to in situ soil moisture measurements. Although none of these satellites is optimized for land surface characterization, before the launches of the SMOSand HYDROS-dedicated missions they are the only potential sources of global soil moisture measurements. The satellite observa...

Soil moisture is an important environmental variable in regulating energy fluxes and water infiltration near the soil surface. This makes it a significant parameter in meteorological and climate modelling applications. While ground measurement of soil moisture at a large spatial scale is cumbersome and time-consuming, remote sensing offers the advantage of frequent observations in time and spac...

Land surface models (LSM) are widely used as scientific and operational tools to simulate mass and energy fluxes within the soil vegetation atmosphere continuum for numerous applications in meteorology, hydrology or for geobiochemistry studies. A reliable parameterization of these models is important to improve the simulation skills. 5 Soil moisture is a key variable, linking the water and ener...