392 REMOTE SENSING/Soil Moisture
and to provide environmentally safer approaches to
producing food.
See also: Classification of Soils; Organic Matter:
Principles and Processes; Remote Sensing: Soil Mois-
ture; Statistics in Soil Science
Further Reading
Baumgardner MF, Silva LF, Biehl LL, and Stoner ER (1985)
Reflectance properties of soils. Advances in Agronomy
38: 1–44.
Ben-Dor EN, Goldlshleger N, Benyamini Y, Agassi M, and
Blumberg D (2003) The spectral reflectance properties
of soil structural crusts in the 1.2- to 2.5-
m spectral
range. Soil Science Society of America Journal 67:
289–299.
Buol SW, Hole FD, McCracken RJ, and Southard RJ (1997)
Soil Genesis and Classification. Ames, IA: Iowa State
University Press.
Ding G, Novak JM, Amarasiriwardena D, Hunt P, and
Xing B (2002) Soil organic matter characteristics as
affected by tillage management. Soil Science Society of
America Journal 66: 421–429.
Fernandez RN, Schulze DG, Coffin DL, and Van Scoyoc GE
(1988) Color, organic matter, and pesticide adsorption
relationships in a soil landscape. Soil Science Society of
America Journal 52: 1023–1026.
Henderson TL, Baumgardner MF, Franzmeier DP, Stott DE,
and Coster DC (1992) High dimensional reflectance
analysis of soil organic matter. Soil Science Society of
America Journal 56: 865–872.
Hoffer RM and Johannsen CJ (1969) Ecological poten-
tials in spectral signature analysis. In: Johnson P (ed.)
Remote Sensing in Ecology, pp. 1–16. Athens: University
of Georgia Press.
Jensen JR (2000) Remote Sensing of the Environment: An
Earth Resource Perspective, 2nd edn. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Johannsen CJ, Baumgardner MF, Willis PR, and Carter PG
(1998) Advances in Remote Sensing Technologies and
Their Potential on Agriculture. 1st International Con-
ference on Geospatial Information in Agriculture and
Forestry, Paper 2–1, Proceedings vol. 1: 6–11.
Kristof SJ (1971) Preliminary multispectral studies of soils.
Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 26(1): 15–18.
Lillesand TM, Kiefer RW, and Chipman JW (2004) Remote
Sensing and Image Interpretation, 5th edn. New York:
John Wiley.
Moran SM, Inoue Y, and Barnes EM (1997) Opportunities
and limitations for image-based remote sensing in
precision crop management. Remote Sensing of Envir-
onment 61(3): 319–346.
National Research Council (1997) Precision Agriculture in
the 21st Century: Geospatial and Information Technolo-
gies in Crop Management. Washington, DC: National
Academy of Sciences.
Shonk JL, Gaultney LD, Schultz DG, and VanScoyc GE
(1991) Spectroscopic sensing of organic matter content.
Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural
Engineers 34(5): 1978–1984.
Stoner ER and Baumgardner MF (1981) Characteristic
variations in reflectance of surface soils. Soil Science
Society of America Journal 45: 1161–1165.
Soil Moisture
T J Jackson, USDA Agricultural Research Service,
Beltsville, MD, USA
ß 2005, Elsevier Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Soil moisture mapping using remote sensing is be-
coming a reality. Soil moisture has been difficult to
measure and map using conventional ground-based
technologies. Microwave remote sensing-based soil-
moisture retrieval has been demonstrated using tower
and aircraft instruments; however, the implementa-
tion of this approach on satellites has been limited by
both technology and availability. Developments in
both science and associated technologies now make
the exploitation of the microwave region for soil
moisture mapping feasible. A review of the basic
principles, operational retrieval algorithms, aircraft
applications, and current and future satellite missions
is presented.
Microwave Remote Sensing of Surface
Soil Moisture
Microwave sensors, especially those operating at
lower microwave frequencies (<6 GHz), are of par-
ticular value in soil moisture measurement because
they respond to the amount of water in the soil. When
this technique is used in a remote sensing instrument,
the surface layer of soil contributes to the microwave
sensor measurement.
Microwave remote sensing can provide a direct
measurement of the surface soil moisture for a range
of vegetation-cover conditions within reasonable
error bounds. Two basic approaches are used, passive
and active. In passive methods, the natural thermal
emission of the land surface (or brightness tem-
perature) is measured at microwave wavelengths,
using very sensitive detectors. In active methods or
radar, a microwave pulse is sent and received. The
power of the received signal is compared to that
which was sent to determine the backscattering
coefficient.
The microwave region of the electromagnetic spec-
trum consists of frequencies of 0.3–30 GHz. This
region is subdivided into bands, which are often