This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0309133309338997v1 33/2/224    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Petropoulos, G. Articles by Islam, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

A review of Ts/VI remote sensing based methods for the retrieval of land surface energy fluxes and soil surface moisture

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK, george.petropoulos{at}bristol.ac.uk, King's College London, Department of Geography, London WC2R 2LS, UK

T.N. Carlson

Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

M.J. Wooster

King's College London, Department of Geography, London WC2R 2LS, UK

S. Islam

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University, 113 Anderson Hall, Medford, MA 02155, USA

Imagery from remote sensing systems, often combined with ancillary ground information, is able to provide repetitive, synoptic views of key parameters characterizing land surface interactions, including surface energy fluxes and surface soil moisture. Differing methodologies using a wide range of remote sensing data have been developed for this purpose. Approaches vary from purely empirical to more complex ones, including residual methods and those that have their basis in the biophysical properties characterizing a two-dimensional T_s/VI (surface temperature/ vegetation index) scatterplot domain derived from remote sensing observations. The present article aims to offer a comprehensive and systematic review of this latter group of methods, which differ in terms of the complexity and assumptions they entail as well as their requirement for field-based and other ancillary data. Prior to the review, the biophysical meanings and properties encapsulated in the T_s/VI feature space is elucidated, since these represent the building block upon which all the T_s/VI methods described herein are based. The overview of the T_s/VI methods is also very timely, as one such method is being scheduled in the operational retrieval of surface soil moisture content by the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), in a series of satellite platforms due to be launched in the next 12 years starting from 2016.

Key Words: latent heat flux • remote sensing • sensible heat flux • surface soil moisture • Ts/VI methods.

This version was published on April 1, 2009

Progress in Physical Geography, Vol. 33, No. 2, 224-250 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0309133309338997


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?