A growing season land surface process/radiobrightness model for wheat-stubble in the Southern Great Plains

The authors' point-scale Land Surface Process/Radiobrightness (LSP/R) model for a prairie grassland in the northern Great Plains was adapted to winter wheat-stubble within the region of the Southern Great Plains 1997 (SGP'97) Hydrology Experiment. The model maintains running estimates of near-surface soil moisture and stored water in soil and vegetation when forced by weather, and predicts the microwave brightness of the terrain. LSP/R model predictions were compared with the field observations recorded during SGP'97. The model captures canopy and soil temperatures very well, with the maximum mean and variance of the difference between the model and field temperatures being 1.06 K and 3.28 K/sup 2/, respectively. It yields reasonable predictions for the moisture in deeper layers of the soil, but its predictions for the moisture in the upper layers are low by /spl sim/2.3% by volume. These underpredictions of near-surface soil moisture result in higher H-pol brightnesses at 19 GHz than those observed.