Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Satellite Data and Unsaturated Soil Response

Abstract

The importance of degree of soil saturation in geotechnical problems resulted in inclusion of unsaturated soil mechanics in various applications for several decades. However, in spite of recent progress in remotely sensed soil moisture measurement, geotechnical community has not yet taken advantage of these advances in analysis of unsaturated soils. NASA launched its Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite in 2015 with the aim of providing surface and root zone soil moisture content over the global land surface at 3-day average intervals. SMAP, as a widely validated and near-real-time database, offers a rich soil moisture database at a global scale that can be used in studies considering unsaturated soil behaviour. A study of the relationship between soil water content and seismic ground response is presented in this paper using SMAP, which includes the tracking of the variations in Earth's surface soil moisture caused by earthquakes.