SMEX02 Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) Data, Iowa
This data set contains radar soil moisture measurments taken over the Soil Moisture Experiments 2002 (SMEX02) Walnut Creek Watershed area in Iowa, USA. The Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) instrument was mounted on a DC-8 aircraft that flew on five days in the study period: 1, 5, 7, 8, and 9 July 2002. On each of these days three distinctive flight lines were flown and six different scenes were collected each day. Two flight lines were east-west in orientation and were concentrated around the Walnut Creek watershed. The other line was north-south oriented, and covered both the WC watershed and the regional study area. These data were collected as part of a validation study for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E). AMSR-E is a mission instrument launched aboard NASA's Aqua Satellite on 04 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.
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