Statistical Modeling of Soil Moisture, Integrating Satellite Remote-Sensing (SAR) and Ground-Based Data

Remote Sensing

Reza Hosseini³  Nathaniel K. Newlands²  Charmaine B. Dean⁴  Akimichi Takemura¹  Nicolas Baghdadi⁵ 

[1] Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan; E-Mail:;Science and Technology, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge Research Centre, 5403 1st Avenue South, P.O. Box 3000, Lethbridge, AB T1J 4B1, Canada;IBM Research Collaboratory, 9 Changi Business Park Central 1, Singapore 486048, Singapore; E-Mail:;Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, University of Western Ontario, 262 Western Science Centre, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada; E-Mail:;IBM Research Collaboratory, 9 Changi Business Park Central 1, Singapore 486048, Singapore; E-Mail

关键词: agriculture;    cross-validation;    multi-scale;    prediction;    RADARSAT;    soil moisture;    uncertainty;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs70302752

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

We present a flexible, integrated statistical-based modeling approach to improve the robustness of soil moisture data predictions. We apply this approach in exploring the consequence of different choices of leading predictors and covariates. Competing models, predictors, covariates and changing spatial correlation are often ignored in empirical analyses and validation studies. An optimal choice of model and predictors may, however, provide a more consistent and reliable explanation of the high environmental variability and stochasticity of soil moisture observational data. We integrate active polarimetric satellite remote-sensing data (RADARSAT-2, C-band) with ground-based in-situ data across an agricultural monitoring site in Canada. We apply a grouped step-wise algorithm to iteratively select best-performing predictors of soil moisture. Integrated modeling approaches may better account for observed uncertainty and be tuned to different applications that vary in scale and scope, while also providing greater insights into spatial scaling (upscaling and downscaling) of soil moisture variability from the field- to regional scale. We discuss several methodological extensions and data requirements to enable further statistical modeling and validation for improved agricultural decision-support.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland