MODIS remote sensing approaches to monitoring soil moisture in Tibet, China

Satellite remote sensing from space offers a unique way to monitor surface soil moisture on a large geographical scale. In this work, the general approaches to monitoring surface soil moisture for Tibet area were developed using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and ground observations. The result shows that MODIS Vegetation Supply Water Index (VSWI) and band-7 reflectance are significantly correlated with ground measured soil moisture and MODIS band 7 is a simple and more effective method to monitor soil moisture in Tibet with higher spatial resolution at 500 m in comparison with VSWI at 1000 m resolution.