Study on soil moisture by thermal infrared data

Abstract

Information on soil moisture is important for environment management. This study bases on the daily observation to study the normalized difference vegetation index and to classify the index data. The results indicate that: (1) the index is able to adequately reflect the changes of soil moisture content in 10 cm and 20 cm thickness of soil layer during the vegetation growth period and (2) Information on soil moisture can be used for regional drought monitoring. The method can be extended for long-term monitoring of droughts over large-scale regions.