PRISM
P-band Radiometer Inferred Soil Moisture
Timely soil moisture information on the near-surface layer is critical to improve water management for food production in the face of extreme climate variability. Current satellite technologies are limited to the top ~5cm layer of soil using an L-band radiometer. It is postulated that P-band radiometer observations will not only provide soil moisture information on a soil layer thickness that more closely relates to that affecting crop and pasture growth, but that it will produce greater spatial coverage with improved accuracy to that from L-band. This is because P-band should be less affected by surface roughness conditions and have a reduced attenuation by the overlaying vegetation.
The P-band Radiometer Inferred Soil Moisture project (PRISM) provides high resolution multi-frequency passive and active microwave remote sensing capabilities at P and L band. The overall objective of PRISM is to develop algorithms and tehniques to demonstrate that the top ~15cm layer of soil moisture can be remotely sensed using a new state-of-art P-band radiometer capability. This comprises a series of tower and airborne capaigns across Victoria and New South Wales, commencing from 2017. The facility includes the Polarimetric P-band Multi-beam Radiometer (PPMR), Polarimetric Lband Multi-beam Radiometer (PLMR), the Polarimetric L-band Imaging SAR (PLIS), and Polarimetric P-band Imaging SAR (PPIS). Concurrently with each campaign, supporting ground data on soil moisture, vegetation properties, soil temperature and surface roughness were collected at intensive monitoring sites.
The PRISM campaigns have been made possible through infrastructure (LE0453434, LE0882509, LE150100047, LE190100045) and research (DP170102373) funding from the Australian Research Council. Initial setup and maintenance of the study catchment were funded by research grants (DP0343778, DP0557543, DP0879212, DP140100572 and DP170102373) from the Australian Research Council, and the CRC for Catchment Hydrology. PRISM also relies upon the collaboration of interested scientists from throughout Australia and around the world.
Experiment Date CORALYNN-17 November - December 2017 CORALYNN-18 October 2018 PRISM-19 September-October 2019 PRISM-21 March 2021 TOWER November 2017 - May 2021
Created: June 2021 Last Modified: June 2021
Maintainer: Xiaoling Wu, xiaoling.wu@monash.edu; Luisa White, luisa.whitemurillo@monash.edu