New Approaches for Removing the Effect of Water Damping on SMAP Freeze/Thaw Mapping

The Northern Quebec landscape is typically covered by numerous lakes. The lowest emissivity of water bodies dominates the brightness temperature (Tb) data measured over this region. Thus, it is necessary to eliminate the effect of water bodies from Tb measurements. The primary objective of this study is to develop two approaches to correct the Soil Moisture Active Passive brightness temperature (SMAP L1C), collected between January and December of 2016, for the damping effect of water bodies within each 36 km by 36 km pixel. The first algorithm normalizes Tb with the intercept of its linear regression versus the water fraction of each pixel. A second algorithm used Tb regression with water fraction by vegetation classes for each scene. Surface soil temperature and moisture measured near Umiujaq were used to validate Tb correction. The proposed Tb corrections resolve the divergence observed with SMAP standard correction when the water fraction is higher than 20%. Corrected brightness temperature is then tested for mapping the soil freeze/thaw state using the Normalized Polarization Ratio. Agreements of up to 90% (ascending orbit) and 79% (descending orbit) were reached for the proposed approach versus 64% and 50% for the existing approach.