Spatial and Temporal Interpolation of CYGNSS Soil Moisture Estimations

Senyurek, V., Gurbuz, A., Kurum, M., Lei, F., Boyd, D., & Moorhead, R. J. (2021). Spatial and Temporal Interpolation of CYGNSS Soil Moisture Estimations. 2021 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS. Brussels, Belgium: IEEE. 6307-6310. DOI:10.1109/IGARSS47720.2021.9553900.

High Spatio-temporal soil moisture is essential for many meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural applications and studies. Spaceborne Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) provides a promising opportunity for high-resolution soil moisture retrievals. NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System is a preeminent GNSS-R application that offers high spatial and temporal resolution observations from Earth's surface. However, the quasi-random sampling of land surface by the CYGNSS constellation circumvents obtaining fully observed daily soil moisture predictions. This work investigates multidimensional spatial and temporal interpolation of the CYGNSS soil moisture estimates using methods such as linear, nearest, and natural interpolation. The results indicate that the interpolation error (RMSE) was 0.032 m3/m3, 0.038 m3/m3, and 0.030 m3/m3 for linear, nearest, and natural interpolation, respectively. The results also show that interpolated and observed CYGNSS SM values have the similar performance metrics when validated with the SMAP 9-km gridded SM product.