Welcome

Welcome to SoMoSAT, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is developing high resolution soil moisture estimates for Ireland. SoMoSAT is a multi-partner and multi-disciplinary team, comprised of computer scientists, Earth Observation specialists, land surface modellers, soil experts, catchment and climate scientists and wireless sensor communications researchers, all working together to understand the factors that contribute to soil moisture at a location and across scales. Collaborators include Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority, and Net Feasa.

SoMoSAT is employing the latest technologies, data infrastructure and computational workflows to address the needs of the research, agricultural and hydrological community for accurate, reliable estimates of soil mositure.

Our Work

Even at the regional or country scale, few observations are typically available and many of these are limited in duration and/or extent. Alternative techniques are required to derive estimates of soil moisture. These include water balance based approaches, such as soil–vegetation–atmosphere transfer (SVAT) models, the use of remotely sensed information (SMAP, AMSR2, SMOS, ASCAT) or the application of land surface modelling (LSM) techniques.

Satellite based techniques offer significant potential for deriving estimates of soil moisture at high spatial and temporal resolutions, however, their use is non-trivial.

The use of neural networks, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to combine data from both active (microwave) and passive (radiometers) satellite sensors are increasingly being employed to derive high spatio-temporal resolution soil moisture estimates, which address the complexity/issues of single sensor based approaches; merged active and passive data products have been shown to generally outperform single sensor based approaches