Notes from the Field

Clear Skies & Forest Sites

June 15th, 2012 by Brian Campbell

Eni Njoku
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Mariko Burgin
University of Michigan

Today the skies are clear. PALS is flying again today, and also flew on June 12th. So this is the third PALS flight day. There is hardly a cloud in sight anywhere as PALS takes off. The soil moisture sampling crews are out.

Location of the forest sites (red) and cropland fields (blue) where access for sampling was granted. Fields where the AAFC long term in situ stations are installed are identified in orange.

 

Pasture just outside F2 has to be crossed to enter the site. Approximate distance from car to entrance of site is about 300 meters (Day 1: 6/7/2012).

 

F2 S1: Mariko at easternmost point. Very clay-rich soil in marshy vegetation (6/7/2012).

 

To read more and see more images, visit the SMAP Blogs from the Field site.

Notes From the Field

June 14th, 2012 by Brian Campbell

Grant Wiseman
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

After much preparation and anticipation it is hard to believe the first week of the SMAPVEX12 campaign is already behind us. The week began with a successful training session held at the Regional Operation Centre (ROC) in Winnipeg. Field teams were instructed on how to use Hydra Probes, CropScan Cameras and Surface Roughness Profilers among other data collection instruments.

The first field sampling day went extremely smooth…

Read more at the SMAP Blogs from the Field site.

 

Down Days

June 11th, 2012 by Brian Campbell

Eni Njoku

We’ve been rained out for four straight days Friday through Monday due to unstable weather conditions in the area – not exactly what we expected! On the other hand we should certainly observe some pretty wet fields when we make our next PALS flights.

On Saturday things looked good in the early morning despite some low-lying fog and expectations that a weather front to the East might move into the area by early afternoon. So we gave the “Go” signal for the sampling teams to head for the fields. Meanwhile at the airport the fog thickened, so take-off was put on hold. Seth and Ian took advantage of the delay to work on some instrument troubleshooting.

By the time the fog at the airport lifted Rich determined that the weather front was moving in much faster than expected and would probably reach the edge of our sampling domain by mid-morning. So we reluctantly aborted the Twin Otter flight for the day and notified the field crew (who were no doubt also anxious not to get caught in the storm). When the storm hit it was a big one! The tornado chasers were out in force, we heard, but none were sighted according to the news (tornados, that is).

Rachel and Paul starting to take vegetation data

Eni in a soybean field, on a day off

To see what else the SMAPVEX12 team does in their downtime, visit SMAP Blogs from the Field

PALS Data First Look

June 8th, 2012 by Brian Campbell

Andreas Colliander

Below are quick-look images from yesterday’s first science flights (June 7). A single polarization each of the radiometer and radar are shown. The data are from high-altitude lines 3 through 8 (lines 1 and 2 were not acquired). For reference, the study site map is also shown (at right).

The radiometer brightness temperature (Tb) and normalized radar cross-section (sigma-0) images are uncalibrated – default parameters were used to convert instrument counts to the respective Tb and sigma-0 quantities. No external calibration has been done at this stage using the lake reference data, however the lake data were used to check that the data levels were approximately correct.

Map of Study Area

PALS v-pol brightness temperature (Tb-v).

PALS vv-pol radar cross-section (sigma-0-vv).

 

To read more about these images, visit SMAP Blogs from the field.

Field Sampling

June 7th, 2012 by Brian Campbell

Mike Cosh

June 7th was our first day of soil moisture sampling in the SMAPVEX12 experiment after two days of training and rehearsal. Beginning at 6:45am, 13 soil moisture teams set out to record surface soil moisture at 59 fields. By 2pm, the teams had returned successfully measuring moisture at 53 fields.

Installing a temporary network station

Justin and Marco sampling near a temporary network station in a spring wheat field.

 

For more information, visit SMAP Blogs from the Field