ESTAR measurements during the Southern Great Plains experiment (SGP99)

Author

Le Vine, David M. ; Jackson, Thomas J. ; Swift, Calvin T. ; Haken, Michael ; Bidwell, Steven W.

Author_Institution

Lab. for Hydrospheric Processes, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

Volume

39

Issue

8

fYear

2001

fDate

8/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1680

Lastpage

1685

Abstract

During the Southern Great Plains experiment (SGP99), the electronically scanned thinned array radiometer (ESTAR) mapped L-band brightness temperature over a swath about 50-km wide and 300 km long, extending west from Oklahoma City, OK, to El Reno, OK, and north from the Little Washita River watershed to the Kansas border. ESTAR flew on the NASA P-3B Orion aircraft at an altitude of 7.6 km, and maps were made on seven days between July 8-20, 1999. The brightness temperature maps reflect the patterns of soil moisture expected from rainfall and are consistent with values of soil moisture observed at the research sites within the SGP99 study area and with previous measurements in this area. The data add to the resources for hydrologic modeling in this area and are further validation of the technology represented by ESTAR as a potential path to a future mission to map soil moisture globally from space

Keywords

hydrological techniques; moisture measurement; radiometry; remote sensing; soil; terrain mapping; 1.413 GHz; AD 1999 07; ESTAR; El Reno; Kansas; L-band; Little Washita River watershed; Oklahoma; SGP99; Southern Great Plains experiment; UHF; USA; United States; airborne method; aperture synthesis; brightness temperature; electronically scanned thinned array radiometer; hydrology; land surface; measurement technique; microwave radiometry; remote sensing; soil moisture; terrain mapping; Aerospace electronics; Aircraft; Brightness temperature; Cities and towns; L-band; NASA; Radiometry; Rivers; Soil moisture; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0196-2892

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/36.942546

Filename

942546