Estimating soil moisture using Temperature–Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) in the Huang-huai-hai (HHH) plain

Soil moisture is an important indicator to describe soil conditions, and can also provide information on crop water stress and yield estimation. The combination of vegetation index (VI) and land surface temperature (LST) can provide useful information on estimation soil moisture status at regional scale. In this paper, the Huang-huai-hai (HHH) plain, an important food production area in China was selected as the study area. The potential of Temperature–Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data in assessing soil moisture was investigated in this region. The 16-day composite MODIS Vegetation Index product (MOD13A2) and 8-day composite MODIS temperature product (MOD11A2) were used to calculate the TVDI. Correlation and regression analysis was carried out to relate the TVDI against in-situ soil moisture measurements data during the main growth stages of winter wheat/summer maize. The results show that a significantly negative relationship exists between the TVDI and in-situ measurements at different soil depths, but the relationship at 10–20 cm depth (R 2 = 0.43) is the closest. The spatial and temporal patterns in the TVDI were also analysed. The temporal evolution of the retrieved soil moisture was consistent with crop phenological development, and the spatial distribution of retrieved soil moisture accorded with the distribution of precipitation during the whole crop growing seasons. The TVDI index was shown to be feasible for monitoring the surface soil moisture dynamically during the crop growing seasons in the HHH plain.

[1]  T. Carlson,et al.  Thermal remote sensing of surface soil water content with partial vegetation cover for incorporation into climate models , 1995 .

[2]  Andrew W. Western,et al.  Towards areal estimation of soil water content from point measurements: time and space stability of mean response , 1998 .

[3]  Jeffrey P. Walker,et al.  THE GLOBAL LAND DATA ASSIMILATION SYSTEM , 2004 .

[4]  I. Sandholt,et al.  A simple interpretation of the surface temperature/vegetation index space for assessment of surface moisture status , 2002 .

[5]  M. S. Moran,et al.  Estimating crop water deficit using the relation between surface-air temperature and spectral vegetation index , 1994 .

[6]  T. Carlson,et al.  A method to make use of thermal infrared temperature and NDVI measurements to infer surface soil water content and fractional vegetation cover , 1994 .

[7]  Qiming Qin,et al.  Evaluation of MODIS derived perpendicular drought index for estimation of surface dryness over northwestern China , 2008 .

[8]  Guido D. Salvucci,et al.  Characteristic rate scale and timescale of supply‐limited transpiration under a Richards‐Cowan Framework , 1999 .

[9]  V. K. Dadhwal,et al.  Assessing potential of MODIS derived temperature/vegetation condition index (TVDI) to infer soil moisture status , 2009 .

[10]  Qiming Qin,et al.  A re‐examination of perpendicular drought indices , 2008 .

[11]  J. C. Price.  Using spatial context in satellite data to infer regional scale evapotranspiration , 1990 .

[12]  M. Derrien,et al.  Automatic cloud detection applied to NOAA-11 /AVHRR imagery , 1993 .

[13]  S. Goetz.  Multi-sensor analysis of NDVI, surface temperature and biophysical variables at a mixed grassland site , 1997 .

[14]  Zheng Niu,et al.  Evaluating soil moisture status in China using the temperature–vegetation dryness index (TVDI) , 2004 .

[15]  Samuel N. Goward,et al.  Evaluating land surface moisture conditions from the remotely sensed temperature/vegetation index measurements: An exploration with the simplified simple biosphere model , 2002 .

[16]  M. Friedl,et al.  Sources of variation in radiometric surface temperature over a tallgrass prairie , 1994 .

[17]  E. Engman,et al.  Status of microwave soil moisture measurements with remote sensing , 1995 .

[18]  Stephan J. Maas,et al.  Combining remote sensing and modeling for estimating surface evaporation and biomass production , 1995 .

[19]  E. Engman.  Applications of microwave remote sensing of soil moisture for water resources and agriculture , 1991 .