Click on “Download PDF” for the PDF version or on the title for the HTML version.

If you are not an ASABE member or if your employer has not arranged for access to the full-text, Click here for options.

A methodology for assessing distributed surface soil moisture content from optical remote sensing is developed. This study uses both ground-based and remotely sensed spectral measurements of soil reflectance in visible and near-infrared wavelengths and concurrent measurements of volumetric soil moisture within the top 6 cm to establish a relationship between spectral response and moisture. Various approaches, including principal component analyses and regression techniques are investigated to determine the potential for quantifying soil moisture from the spectral reflection data. Preliminary investigations have yielded R2 values as high as 0.62 when comparing predictions to actual moisture values. Investigation of predicting soil organic matter content from the same data is also performed.