NASA and BME Start Their Collaboration to Validate Satellite Measurements

The Department for Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics at BME’s Faculty of Civil Engineering hosted the NASA’s SMAP science team as part of a three-day field campaign in Hungary to validate satellite soil moisture measurements. The field trip was carried out following a Memorandum of Understanding agreement signed between NASA and BME earlier this year. In the framework of the collaboration

BME supports the renowned U.S. governmental agency by collecting field data in Hungary.

The field campaign was conducted together with the Institute for Soil Sciences of HUN-REN ATK (TAKI). On the first day, the two NASA researchers, Simon Yueh, principal investigator of NASA’s SMAP satellite mission, and his deputy, Rajat Brindlish from NASA Goddard Space Center, visited the institute’s laboratory, and gave a seminar talk on soil-moisture data obtained from SMAP and from the newly launched NISAR satellite mission, a US-Indian satellite cooperation. Following the seminar the group carried out a fieldwork at the Nagyhörcsök Agricultural Experimental Site of TAKI, where the researchers studied soil-moisture conditions on agricultural fields and carried out in-situ measurements, Zsófia Kugler, Head of Department and chair of the space research group, a former visiting scientist to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a Fulbright scholar, told bme.hu.

Simon Yueh, Ágota Horel (TAKI), Zsófia Kugler and Rajat Bindlish

“While satellite mission are in orbit, it is essential to compare data collected from space with ground-based measurements in order to minimize or eliminate potential errors. The field data we collect are therefore particularly valuable to NASA, at the same time is essential to get a better understanding of space soil moisture measurements to ensure the success of the validation process. The field campaign and measurements help ensure that the ground-based data can be reliably used in the validation of satellite based soil-moisture measurements,” added Ms Kugler, Associate Professor at BME.

On the second day, the group travelled to the pastures and vineyards of the Balaton Uplands, visiting the soil-moisture monitoring sites operated by TAKI. And on the third day, they did test measurements on the gently rolling hills of Somogy County, along the Koppány Stream valley, together with the Department of Water Supply, Sanitary and Environmental Engineering at BME, with the aim of supporting the validation process. “It is important that validation is carried out in different environments—not only across different soil conditions, but also with regard to vegetation cover, which has a strong influence on the satellite measurements”, she explained.

Ms Kugler noted that verifying the accuracy and reliability of satellite data is a key task of NASA’s satellite missions. This year’s drought has strongly emphasized the importance of getting a comprehensive, large-scale understanding of soil moisture. Not only agriculture, irrigation, and crop yields, but also weather forecasting and ground mobility—an issue relevant to defence and security operations—depend on the amount of moisture present in the soil. 

“This cooperation, comparing field measurements with satellite observations, holds promise for significant research results at the international level,” 

concluded the BME researcher.

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