Estimation of Surface Moisture Content and Evapotranspiration Using Weightage Approach.

• Main Author: HASSABALLA, ABDALHALEEM ABDALLA
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/15429/1/FinalII.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/15429/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Soil moisture (MC) and evapotranspiration (ET) are considered as the most significant boundary conditions controlling most of the hydrological cycle’s processes. However, monitoring them continuously over large areas using the high temporal-resolution optical satellites is very demanding. Satellites such as the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), have a coarse spatial resolution in their images. Thus it not only impedes the acquisition of an accurate MC and ET but also represents multispectral reflections from the holistic surface features. This beside their dependence on vegetation and ground coefficient when assessing MC and ET. The study aims to enhance the spatial accuracy by weighting the MC produced from different surface cover classes within the pixel. MC for each pixel is segmented into three (3) different classes namely urban, vegetation and multi surface cover according to their respective MC weightage. Secondly, to generate an improved actual ETa map by overlaying the segmented MC with a rectified ETo. Images from AVHRR and MODIS satellites were selected in order to generate MC and ET maps. Two powerful MC algorithms were used based on land Surface Temperature (Ts), vegetation Indices (VI) and field measurements of MC; which were conducted at variable depths to examine the depth influence on MC and Ts magnitudes.