MOLAWA

Soil moisture is one of the most important parameters for the monitoring of landscape water processes. Actual methods just provide information at selected points. Remote Sensing enables the detailed and laminar gathering of soil moisture in the upper soil layers. Besides the direct quantification of soil moisture using the microwave date (L-Band) additional canopy information based on optical hyperspectral data (HyMAP, AISA) will be linked to describe the annual change of the landscape water balance. To estimate influence of varying soil moisture on the different remote sensing data the signals are modeled using complex 3D virtual canopies.

GFZ tasks include:  

• Modeling the reflectance and backscattering of crops and grassland based on 3D virtual canopies
• Ground Truth data collection.
• Analysis of hyperspectral data
• Concepts for data fusion of hyperspectral and microwave data

The project MOLAWA is in cooperation with the company LUP- Luftbild Umwelt Planung GmbH and financed by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi) within the budget of the Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand (ZIM) - (KF2340702SA9). The duration of this project is from 01.06.2010 - 31.10.2012.