Soil Moisture During 2015 Spring Flood Events from the SMAP Radar Time-Series Ratio Algorithm

The hydrologic cycle of the Earth is a global process that describes the exchange of water as it cycles between the land surface, sea, and atmosphere. One key variable in this cycle is surface soil moisture which influences a variety of different systems such as infiltration and runoff, terrestrial hydrology, and the evapotranspiration cycle. Soil moisture also impacts numerous ecological and climatological applications such as weather forecasting, water resource management, irrigation planning, crop yield prediction, food security, and flood dynamics. Methods to remotely sense surface soil moisture at fine spatial and temporal resolutions over extended geographic regions are therefore of interest.