Remote Sensing of Energy Fluxes and Soil Moisture Content

Discussing the state of the art in the remote sensing of surface turbulent heat fluxes and soil surface moisture content, this book offers the most up-to-date understanding of the natural processes of Earth systems and their interactions with man-made activities. Identifying effective, accurate, and practical methods, it allows researchers to obtain much-needed data on the soilscape at decreased cost: both reducing the amount of field data collection and increasing coverage area. An all-inclusive overview of methods and modeling techniques, it provides case studies and considers future trends, prospects, and scientific challenges.

Integrating decades of research conducted by leading scientists in the field, Remote Sensing of Energy Fluxes and Soil Moisture Content provides an overview of state-of-the-art methods and modeling techniques employed for deriving spatio-temporal estimates of energy fluxes and soil surface moisture from remote sensing. It also underscores the range of such techniques available nowadays as well as the operationally distributed networks that provide today in-situ validated relevant observations.

The book brings together three types of articles:

• Comprehensive reviews that examine the developments in concepts, methods, and techniques employed in deriving land surface heat fluxes as well as soil surface moisture on field, regional, and large scales, paying particular emphasis to the techniques exploiting Earth Observation (EO) technology
• Detailed insights into the principles and operation of the most widely applied approaches for the quantification and analysis of surface fluxes and soil moisture with case studies that directly show the great applicability of remote sensing in this field, or articles discussing specific issues in the retrievals of those parameters from space
• Focused articles integrating current knowledge and scientific understanding in the remote sensing of energy fluxes and soil moisture, that are highlighting the main issues, challenges, and future prospects of this emerging technology.

Designed with different users in mind, the book is organized in four more or less independent units that make specific information easy to find. It presents a discussion on the future trends and prospects, underlying the scientific challenges that need to be addressed adequately in order to derive more accurate estimates of those parameters from space.