Soil Moisture

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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

Category

• Topographic information
• Impact assessment
• Change detection / continuous monitoring
• Land cover / use
• Near surface geology

• Surface deformation
• Precision ortho-images
• Terrain information
• Water quantity & quality

Uses

• Design, Construction and Operations – Monitoring routine water emissions. Often mines need to discharge water into the environment. Soil moisture could be an indicator to assess the effect during construction.
• Design, Construction and Operations – soil moisture could also be an indicator to assess cover performance.
• Closure and Aftercare - Plume tracing of leaks or seepage. When operators have failed to implement a good closure programme plumes can occur (f.e. as a result of dam breach/failure). Soil moisture can be an indication of increase moisture levels after closure of the mine.

Challenges addressed

• Development and Operations – Structural Stability
• Development and Operations – Environmental Mapping
• Closure and Aftercare – Environmental Mapping

Geo-information needs

• DO-16 Monitoring of cover performance (WRD/stockpile/tailings).
• DO-20 Monitoring routine water emissions
• CA-10 Plume tracing of leaks or seepage

Description

Soil moisture is crucial for all biological life on land and influences the energy, water and carbon fluxes at the land surface. Further, it influences hydrological and agricultural processes, runoff generation, drought development and impacts on the climate system.

Thus, soil moisture is a crucial parameter for a large number of applications including flood prediction and identification of wet areas. Soil moisture can be derived using satellite observations and a retrieval algorithm, which often solves both the variables of soil moisture and vegetation. Typical sensors that observe soil moisture are passive microwave (SMOS, AMSR-E, SMAP) and SAR (ASCAT, SMAP, Sentinel). The satellite-based product expresses the soil moisture in volumetric content of moisture in the top 5 cm of the soil.

ESA’s soil moisture CCI initiative (2011-2018) supported the merging of active and passive remotely sensed soil moisture and performing comparison analyses.

Known restrictions / limitations

• Soil moisture acquired using Active Microwave or Radar-based is influenced by presence of clouds.
• There is uncertainty in snow-covered areas.

Lifecycle stage and demand

Exploration

Environmental Assessment and Permitting

Design, Construction and Operations

Mine Closure and Aftercare

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Design, Construction & Operations: Discharging water into the environment is an activity that many mines around the world must undertake (as mining activities will in many cases end up below the water table). Mines are required to assess the impact that their water discharge may have on the receiving environment by measuring the volume of water and mass emission of various chemical parameters. They must also assess the assimilative capacity of the receiving environment for the volume of water and the chemical parameters, this is achieved by measuring the receiving water conditions. Mapping the key locations with respect to water discharge and receipt into the environment is important to allow this information to be presented geographically. Besides surface water changes, soil moisture changes can also be a parameter, mostly to assess liquefaction processes. In addition, moisture content of covers for waste rock dumps, stockpiles and tailings will influence their performance, and thus monitoring is desirable.

Mine Closure & Aftercare: When a mine is in the closure or aftercare period it is the time when discrete plumes can be most problematic, particularly when operators have failed to implement a good closure programme or when unforeseen extreme precipitation events occur. Mapping the location and progress of any plumes and presenting these data geographically is an important aspect with respect to this parameter. Soil moisture could be an indirect parameter added to surface water changes.

Geographic coverage

EARSC Thematic Domain

Domain

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Input data sources

Website

Higher resolution soil moisture data is available in commercial companies.

ESA’s Soil Moisture CCI merges active and passively acquired soil moisture product. https://www.esa-soilmoisture-cci.org/

Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU)

n/a (the product is directly based on the input data; the smallest unit is 1 pixel, see above for spatial resolution of pixel size).

Accuracy / constraints

Thematic accuracy:

Inland Water – Assess Groundwater and Runoff. 50%

Soil moisture gives information about the water in the top 5 cm of the soil and indirectly says something about the groundwater levels

Spatial accuracy:

See above. For seepage detection a higher resolution is needed than currently provided.

Accuracy assessment approach & quality control measures

Soil moisture retrieval algorithms are usually calibrated by making use of field experiments with in situ and airborne vehicles. Furthermore, in science the soil moisture product have been evaluated and compared against each other.

Frequency / timeliness

Usually within 24 hours after acquisition.

Availability

Data is typically freely available for non-commercial use through the open data policy of the different space agencies. See for an overview of the used satellites the table above.

Delivery / output format

Typically, the datasets are delivered in raster NetCDF format, HDF5 or TIFF.

USE CASE