Environment Canada scientists have been working on the Canadian Science Plan for the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite developed by NASA’s JPL due to launch in October 2014.

SMAP is expected to generate remote sensing data that will greatly improve soil moisture analyses that will be produced by the Canadian Land Data Assimilation System (CaLDAS), and will be used to provide and improve the initial conditions of all weather and environmental forecasting systems used by the Meteorological Service of Canada.

In a lead-up to the 2014 launch date, the SMAP validation experiment field campaign ran southwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba from June 7 to July 17, 2012. The main objective of the field campaign was to provide the necessary data to test and calibrate algorithms developed to retrieve soil moisture with SMAP. As well, the validation experiment is intended to establish methods and procedures for post-launch calibration of the satellite instruments.

Soil moisture estimates generated by SMAP will be for a 5-10 cm surface soil layer and will be based on measurements of radiometric brightness temperatures and of radar backscatters at wavelengths of about 20 cm. This will be the last major field campaign prior to launching the satellite and significant efforts have been made to ensure that all necessary data are acquired. Two NASA aircraft are being deployed over the study area carrying sensors that will be on the satellite: a Twin Otter carrying the Passive Active L- and S- band (PALS) microwave sensor and a Gulfstream-III carrying the Unmanned Air Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR). The ground component of the field campaign is coordinated by Agriculture and Agri-food Canada and involves about 70 staff sampling a large number of fields throughout the six-week study period (about 55 sites).  

Sites of interest:

SMAP at NASA's JPL

SMAP validation experiment 2012

Contact: Stéphane Bélair, Atmospheric Science and Technology Directorate, Meteorological Research Division