Assessment of vegetation water dynamics by comparing microwave remote sensing signals from satellites and field-based GNSS reflectometry

Abstract. Monitoring plant water stress and biomass is limited by labor intensive measurements techniques. Observing plant water conditions more broadly is now enabled by microwave remote sensing. Specifically, satellite-based vegetation optical depth (VOD) provides daily observations of vegetation water volume at tens of kilometers. While satellite VOD has been used for many applications, VOD validations have rarely been carried out. A new method has enabled direct measurements of in-situ VOD, from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). However, GNSS measurements have yet to be applied to more globally dominant grasslands and shrublands. Here, we explore how satellite-based VOD from SMAP and AMSR-2 compares with field-based microwave observations from 272 GNSS-based interferometric reflectometry (GNSS-IR) sites across the Western U.S as a part of the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) H20 network. These sensors measure a proxy for VOD at a scale of tens of meters, the normalized microwave reflectance index (NMRI). We find that satellite VOD generally positively correlates with GNSS NMRI with correlations between 0.2 to 0.6 across sites. These correlations increase to 0.3 to 0.7 when evaluating sites in regions with low spatial vegetation type heterogeneity, low tree cover, and large seasonal vegetation dynamics. The correlations are higher for X-band VOD, likely related to our finding that both X-band VOD and NMRI are both more sensitive to seasonal vegetation variations than C-band and L-band VOD products. These findings suggest that satellite VOD is capturing field-based GNSS signals in dryland ecosystems, and therefore that these sensors are a critical resource for validating satellite VOD at scale.