Soil moisture mapping using ESTAR under dry conditions from the Southern Great Plains Experiment (SGP99)

The electronically scanned thin array radiometer (ESTAR) was utilized for soil moisture mapping during the Southern Great Plains Experiment (SGP99). A retrieval algorithm was applied to obtain soil moisture from passive microwave measurements at 1.4 GHz. The algorithm was verified using ground data collected during SGP99. The results indicate a good correlation between observed and predicted soil moisture values and are consistent with results obtained from the same instrument in previous experiments. The present results demonstrate the validity of the retrieval algorithm for moderately to extremely dry soils. The ESTAR measurements along with ancillary data were used to create soil moisture maps of the entire region.