SOIL MOISTURE FROM SPACE: WHERE ARE WE?

Abstract

Soil moisture is certainly an important life sustaining entity. The first “use” of soil moisture is to enable vegetation growth. Actually, water stored in the soil has many other roles. It controls the partitioning of rainfall into runoff and infiltration, and efficient infiltration usually means replenishment of the aquifer, while runoff may mean both exportation of valuable water to other areas and degradation of top soil through leaching and erosion. Also, when saturated, soil may transform heavy rainfall into floods. Consequently, soil moisture is a key variable for improving the forecasting features of run-off models which assess flood risk and aid water-resources management.