CEE6900 Environmental Applications of Remote Sensing
Lecture Five – Microwave Remote Sensing – 18 Hours
¾ Perform a comprehensive review of the ‘Dartmouth Flood Observatory’. This is
considered reading material for 2 weeks
¾ HW#7 (Due the first two weeks) A) Write a small program (Fortran or Matlab) to
simulate brightness temperatures at 37GHz for loamy soil for moisture content
ranging from 5% to 100% (assume bare soil). B) Review the SMAP mission and
write a report.
¾ HW#8 (Due 3rd week) – Comprehensive report on the Dartmouth Flood
Observatory in terms of the applications.
¾ HW#9 (Due 5th week) – Provide Landsat and SRTM overpasses with water/land
mask. Ask students to use programming/GIS to 1) plot elevation versus river
reach 2) derive water slope 3) use IWM bathymetry and Manning’s equation to
derive discharge.
¾ HW#10 (Due 6th week) – GPCP rainfall data download and visualization
¾ Cover the following lecture in two classes (18 hours).
SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS
A. REMOTE SENSING OF SOIL MOISTURE (HW#7)
¾ Why is soil moisture important? Review the EOS paper by Shafiqul Islam and
Ted Engman. Discuss the challenges of getting soil moisture estimates globally.
Why is in-situ soil moisture hard. Talk about non-destructive method (TDR).
Why Bother for 0.0001% of Earth's Water: Challenges and Opportunities in Soil Moisture
Research," 77(43) (1996): 420 , EOS -Transactions of the American Geophysical Union.
(with Engman, T.)
¾ Get your soil moisture class project report and associated paper. Give it to class.
Go over the equations (Fresnel equations for TB and Ulaby’s formula for
dielectric constant). Go over the model carefully. Dig up ppts if any from UConn
remote sensing class.
¾ Get class to write program to simulate Tb for various conditions/configurations.
¾ Go over SMAP mission briefly.
B. REMOTE SENSING OF DISCHARGE USING SAR INTEROMETRY
(HW#8 and HW#9)
¾ Review the SWOT mission (present the ‘SWOT Mission.ppt’ to class
¾ Go over how interferometry –elevation, bathymetry and Manning’s equation
can give Q. Show the example you did for Brahmaputra river.
¾ Class will have to redo the exercise.
C. REMOTE SENSING OF PRECIPITATION (GPCP) (HW#9)
¾ Overview the GPCP project, website. Get CEE6440 notes and the homework.
¾ Show them how to access data. Assign HW#9 – visualization of global
patterns (comparison with TRMM climatologic rainfall map) and calculation
of anomaly. Extra credit for performing in-situ validation.
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