Large-scale soil moisture mapping in western Africa using the ERS scatterometer

Water is a critical resource in western Africa, and droughts are a serious threat to the population and the environment. A technique to retrieve soil moisture from ERS scatterometer data is applied over a large region covering southern Mali and Burkina Faso. How the method accounts for the wide range of climatic and physiographic conditions encountered in the study area is discussed. An analysis of monthly soil moisture maps covering six years of data shows that the climatic conditions are well reflected in the remotely sensed data.