| To ensure the ongoing accuracy of existing and future soil moisture satellites, in situ calibration/validation must occur. This study seeks to maximize accuracy of an in situ network while minimizing the costs typically associated with validation/calibration by determining the minimum number of sites required to characterize the mean soil moisture of a satellite pixel. Furthermore, calibration/validation costs can be further reduced by assessing the suitability of existing soil moisture monitoring stations for use as long term calibration/validation sites. In this case, two existing stations were assessed with only one proving accurate enough for use as a satellite validation/calibration station. This study also addressed the calls in recent literature (Wagner et al., 2007) to assess and compare the performance of satellite soil moisture retrieval algorithms in a variety of moisture conditions by assessing the performance of the Njoku (2005) and the Owe (2007) soil moisture retrieval algorithms. |
