InSAR constraints on soil moisture evolution after the March 2015 extreme precipitation event in Chile.

ABSTRACT:

Abstarct

Constraints on soil moisture can guide agricultural practices, act as input into weather, flooding and climate models and inform water resource policies. Space-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) observations provide near-global coverage, even in the presence of clouds, of proxies for soil moisture derived from the amplitude and phase content of radar imagery. We describe results from a 1.5 year-long InSAR time series spanning the March, 2015 extreme precipitation event in the hyperarid Atacama desert of Chile, constraining the immediate increase in soil moisture and drying out over the following months, as well as the response to a later, smaller precipitation event. The inferred temporal evolution of soil moisture is remarkably consistent between indep

SUBMITTER: Scott CP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5501829 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature