SMEX02 Vegetation Water Content, Iowa Regional and Walnut Creek Watershed

Data Contributors

JACKSON, THOMAS
COSH, MICHAEL

Parameters

PLANT CHARACTERISTICS
VEGETATION COVER
VEGETATION INDEX

Instruments

ETM+ : ENHANCED THEMATIC MAPPER PLUS
TM : THEMATIC MAPPER

This data set is part of the Soil Moisture Experiment 2002 (SMEX02) project, which is associated with the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) validation project. It consists of Vegetation Water Content (VWC) data. VWC was derived from Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), which was derived from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) imagery. The TM satellite data were acquired during select dates in June and July 2002. These data cover the SMEX02 Walnut Creek watershed and the regional Iowa study areas in Iowa, USA.

Data are provided as flat binary files and are available via FTP. Data must be divided by 25.5 to obtain the actual vegetation water content in kg/m³.

AMSR-E is an instrument launched aboard NASA's Aqua Satellite on 4 May 2002. AMSR-E validation studies linked to SMEX are designed to evaluate the accuracy of AMSR-E soil moisture data. Specific validation objectives include assessing and refining soil moisture algorithm performance, verifying soil moisture estimation accuracy, investigating the effects of vegetation, surface temperature, topography, and soil texture on soil moisture accuracy, and determining the regions that are useful for AMSR-E soil moisture measurements.

Data Citation

SMEX02 Vegetation Water Content, Iowa Regional and Walnut Creek Watershed