Airborne/spaceborne hydrological remote sensing and data assimilation

The overall aim of the airborne and spaceborne remote sensing activities at IBG 3 is to gain knowledge about storage and fluxes regarding the hydrological cycle. Here, we have a strong focus on the estimation of the spatial and temporal dynamics of soil moisture. The estimation of soil moisture in the root zone is of high importance for improving short- and medium-term meteorological modeling, hydrological modeling, the monitoring of plant growth, as well as for forecasting of hazardous events such as floods. Passive (radiometer) as well as active (radar) microwave methods are validated against in situ observations from wireless soil moisture sensor networks, cosmic ray probes and model simulations. Another aim is to optimally combine active and passive microwave measurements of soil moisture by developing new fusion and downscaling algorithms to derive high-resolution near-surface soil moisture fields. One important task in this context is the utilization of the remote sensing data in hydrological models. A sound integration is assured by data assimilation methods. Those sequential Monte Carlo techniques, such as the particle filter, can easily be integrated in an operational way into the processing chains for higher level remote sensing products.

Passive microwave measurements (brightness temperature) by PLMR

• SMOS Validation and Soil Moisture Product Enhancement with data assimilation methods
• Helmholtz-Alliance “Remote Sensing and Earth System Dynamics”
• TERENO airborne active and passive microwave remote sensing
• Process based modeling of regional water and energy fluxes using multi-scale observation patterns: Subproject C6 within the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre TR32 - Patterns in Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Systems: Monitoring, Modeling and Data Assimilation
• Predicting hydrological fluxes in the Haihe river basin using remote sensing and data assimilation methods
• Utilization of RapidEye data for improved hydrological and radiative transfer modeling

Contact:

Dr. Carsten Montzka
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
Institute of Bio- and Geosciences
Agrosphere Institute (IBG 3),
52425 Juelich
Phone: +49 (0)2461-613289
E-Mail: c.montzka@fz-juelich.de