System for Soil Moisture Retrieval and Data Assimilation from Remotely Sensed Data in Arid Regions

This paper presents an approach to integrating remote sensing inversion and data assimilation to better estimate soil moisture over a large area.In support of the Microsoft.Net and ESRI ArcEngine,the C# and RSI/IDL are used to develop software modules to implement the models for soil moisture estimation from MODIS and AMSR-E data.A software package for soil moisture retrieval and data assimilation is developed by integrating the inversion modules,data assimilation modules and GIS modules.This application offers a tool for soil moisture estimation over a large area using remotely sensed data and proposed models,enabling related management departments to operationally map large-area soil moisture for assessing ecological and environmental quality.