Satellite soil moisture for agricultural drought monitoring: Assessment of the SMOS derived Soil Water Deficit Index

Drought is a major cause of limited agricultural productivity and of crop yield uncertainty throughout the world. For that reason, agricultural drought research and monitoring are of increasing interest. Although soil moisture is the main variable to define and identify agricultural drought, the actual soil water content is rarely taken into account because this type of drought is commonly studied using methodologies based on either climatological data or hydrological modeling. Currently, it is possible to use remote sensing to obtain global and frequent soil moisture data that could be directly used for agricultural drought monitoring everywhere. For example, the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) satellite was launched in 2009 and provides global soil moisture maps every 1–2days. In this work, the Soil Water Deficit Index (SWDI) was calculated using the SMOS L2 soil moisture series in the REMEDHUS (Soil Moisture Measurement Stations Network) area (Spain) during the period 2010–2014. The satellite index was thus calculated using several approaches to obtain the soil water parameters and was compared with the SWDI obtained from in situ data. One approach was based directly on SMOS soil moisture time series (using the 5th percentile as an estimator for wilting point and the 95th percentile and the minimum of the maximum value during the growing season as estimators for field capacity). In this case, the results of the comparison were good, but the temporal distribution and the range of the index data were unrealistic. Other approaches were based on in situ data parameters and pedotransfer functions estimation. In this case, the results were better, and the satellite index was able to adequately identify the drought dynamics. Therefore, the final choice to apply the index in one particular site will depend on the availability of data. Finally, a comparison analysis was made with the SMOS SWDI and two indices (Crop Moisture Index, CMI, and Atmospheric Water Deficit, AWD) commonly used for agricultural drought monitoring and assessment. In both cases, the agreement was very good, and it was proven that SMOS SWDI reproduces well the soil water balance dynamics and is able to appropriately track agricultural drought.