| Surface moisture is an important parameter because it modifies urban microclimate and surface layer meteorology. The primary objectives of this paper are: 1) to analyze the impact of surface roughness from buildings on surface moisture in urban areas; and 2) to quantify the impact of surface roughness resulting from urban trees on surface moisture. To achieve the objectives, two hypotheses were tested: 1) the distribution of surface moisture is associated with the structural complexity of buildings in urban areas; and 2) The distribution and change of surface moisture is associated with the distribution and vigor of urban trees. The study area is Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. In the part of the morphology of urban trees, Warren Township was selected due to the limitation of tree inventory data. To test the hypotheses, the research design was made to extract the aerodynamic parameters, such as frontal areas, roughness length and displacement height of buildings and trees from Terrestrial and Airborne LiDAR data, then to input the aerodynamic parameters into the urban surface energy balance model. The methodology was developed for comparing the impact of aerodynamic parameters from LiDAR data with the parameters that were derived empirically from land use and land cover data.;The analytical procedures are discussed below: 1) to capture the spatial and temporal variation of surface moisture, daily and hourly Land Surface Temperature (LST) were downscaled from 4 km to 1 km, and 960 m to 30 m, respectively, by regression between LST and various components that impact LST; 2) to estimate surface moisture, namely soil moisture and evapotranspiration (ET), land surfaces were classified into soil, vegetation, and impervious surfaces, using Linear Spectral Mixture Analysis (LSMA); 3) aerodynamic parameters of buildings and trees were extracted from Airborne and Terrestrial LiDAR data; 4) the Temperature-Vegetation-Index (TVX) method, and the Two-Source-Energy-Balance (TSEB) model was used to estimate soil moisture and ET and fractional cover of urban landscape was used to estimate soil moisture and ET over vegetation, soil, and impervious surfaces.;The results of this dissertation showed the general trend of daily and hourly soil moisture and ET over vegetation, soil, and impervious surfaces in summer, fall, and winter seasons, and the response of soil moisture and ET to precipitations over three types of land covers. In summer, hourly soil moisture fluctuates yet stable; during frequent precipitation, hourly ET over soil and impervious surface show similar patterns, while vegetation surfaces yielded lower ET, which indicated that the distribution and change of surface moisture is associated with the distribution and vigor of urban trees. From fall to winter, the general trend of soil moisture and ET were found decreased, and response to precipitations becomes weaker in winter. The spatial distribution of ET shows that the central urban area has higher ET than regular impervious surfaces and the city's average, which indicate the distribution of surface moisture is associated with the structural complexity of buildings. The two hypotheses were supported, and the methodology is tested to be effective in surface moisture estimation in urban areas. The results suggested future studies on the impact of anthropogenic heat on surface moisture and the data integrity issue in multiple data source in urban areas. |
