Evaluation of soil moisture content from ASTER and Worldview 2 imageries

The traditional approach of soil mapping is time consuming and requires large amount of investments, especially for large scale areas, whereas the reflectance spectrometry for assessing the spectral behavior of soil has been an alternative [13]. This study aims to predict the moisture level in soil and significant wavelengths pointing the moisture existence with the help of satellite imageries and spectroscopic data. For that purpose, spectral profiles obtained from Advanced Spaceborn Thermal Emission and Reflection (ASTER) and Worldview 2 (Wv-2) imageries are utilized in the analysis coupled with the spectroscopic data acquired with ASD spectrometer instrument. The study reveals the fact that ASTER has a superior capability to predict the moisture content over Wv-2, also indicating the capability of Wv-2 having a narrow region in electromagnetic spectrum as a cost & time efficient tool.