Chapters authored
Synergy between SMOS-MIRAS and Landsat-OLI/TIRS Data for Soil Moisture Mapping before, during, and after Flash-Flood Storm in Southwestern Morocco
This chapter deals with soil moisture (SM) characterization over the Guelmim city and its neighborhood in the Southwestern Morocco that has been flooded several times over the past 50 years. To achieve this, space-borne SMOS and Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data were preprocessed to correct several radiometric anomalies, and they were used. The SMOS brightness temperature data acquired before, during, and after the storm with 1-day temporal resolution and coarse spatial resolution (25 km) were transformed to the SM maps. OLI and TIRS data with moderate spatial and temporal resolutions were converted to Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) to retrieve the Soil Moisture Index (SMI) maps. The results obtained were analyzed, intercompared, and validated against the compiled SM values from rainfall database (SM-RFE) delivered by NOAA climate prediction center Rainfall Estimator (RFE) for Africa. SMOS results show how the spatial variation of SM changes extremely at the regional scale before, during, and after the flash flood day-to-day. The SMI results converge toward the same conclusions showing a drastic SM change before and after flash flood highlighting the impact of inundation and the mud accumulation. By reference to the measured SM-RFE datasets, the validation of the derived SM maps exhibits a significant correlation (R2 ≥ 0.89). Globally, we observe a good complementarity among the considered data sources and processing methods for SM spatial information extraction, and the potential of their integration for the development of a prediction and monitoring model for flash flooding at the regional and local scales.
Part of the book: Topics in Hydrometerology