on the critical behaviour of observed and simulated spatial soil moisture fields during sgp97关键行为的观察和模拟空间sgp97期间土壤水分字段.pdfVIP

Remote Sens. 2010, 2, 2097-2110; doi:10.3390/rs2092097 OPEN ACCESS Remote Sensing ISSN 2072-4292 /journal/remotesensing Article On the Critical Behaviour of Observed and Simulated Spatial Soil Moisture Fields during SGP97 Giovanni Laguardia 1, Antonella Di Domenico 2 and Mekonnen Gebremichael 3,* 1 Dipartimento di Idraulica, Trasporti ed Infrastrutture Civili, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Turin, Italy; E-Mail: giovanni.laguardia@ 2 Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Fisica dell’Ambiente, Università della Basilicata, Via dell’Ateneo Lucano, 85100 Potenza, Italy; E-Mail: antonella.didomenico@unibas.it 3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, 261 Glenbrook Road Unit 2037, Storrs, CT 06269-2037, USA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: mekonnen@; Tel.: +1-860-486-2771; Fax: +1-860-486-2298. Received: 25 June 2010; in revised form: 30 July 2010 / Accepted: 30 August 2010 / Published: 2 September 2010 Abstract: The aircraft-based ESTAR soil moisture fields from the Southern Great Plains 1997 (SGP97) Hydrology Experiment are compared to the simulated ones obtained by Bertoldi et al. [1] with the GEOtop model [2], with a particular focus on their capability in capturing the critical point behaviour in their space-time dynamics (see [3]). The critical point behaviour should denote the transition of soil moisture spatial patterns from an unorganized to organized appearance, as conditions become wetter. The study regio