Remotely Sensed High-Resolution Soil Moisture and Evapotranspiration: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Society

Authors

Jingyi Huang, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vinit Sehgal, Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge
Laura V. Alvarez, University of Texas at El Paso
Luca Brocca, Research Institute for Geo‐Hydrological Protection, Italy
Shuohao Cai, University of Wisconsin‐Madison
Rui Cheng, Claremont McKenna College
Xinghua Cheng, University of Connecticut - Storrs
Jinyang Du, University of Montana, Missoula
Bassil El Masri, Murray State University
K. Arthur Endsley, University of Montana, Missoula
Yilin Fang, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Jie Hu, University of Wisconsin‐Madison
Mahesh Jampani, International Water Management Institute (IWMI‐CGIAR), Sri Lanka
Md Golam Kibria, Morehead State University
Gerbrand Koren, Utrecht University
Lingcheng Li, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Laibao Liu, The University of Hong Kong
Jiafu Mao, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Hernan A. Moreno, University of Texas at El Paso
Angela Rigden, University of California, Irvine
Mingjie Shi, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Xiaoying Shi, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Yaoping Wang, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Xi Zhang, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Joshua B. Fisher, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-13-2025

Abstract

This paper reviews the current state of high-resolution remotely sensed soil moisture (SM) and evapotranspiration (ET) products and modeling, and the coupling relationship between SM and ET. SM downscaling approaches for satellite passive microwave products leverage advances in artificial intelligence and high-resolution remote sensing using visible, near-infrared, thermal-infrared, and synthetic aperture radar sensors. Remotely sensed ET continues to advance in spatiotemporal resolutions from MODIS to ECOSTRESS to Hydrosat and beyond. These advances enable a new understanding of bio-geo-physical controls and coupled feedback mechanisms between SM and ET reflecting the land cover and land use at field scale (3–30 m, daily). Still, the state-of-the-science products have their challenges and limitations, which we detail across data, retrieval algorithms, and applications. We describe the roles of these data in advancing 10 application areas: drought assessment, food security, precision agriculture, soil salinization, wildfire modeling, dust monitoring, flood forecasting, urban water, energy, and ecosystem management, ecohydrology, and biodiversity conservation. We discuss that future scientific advancement should focus on developing open-access, high-resolution (3–30 m), sub-daily SM and ET products, enabling the evaluation of hydrological processes at finer scales and revolutionizing the societal applications in data-limited regions of the world, especially the Global South for socio-economic development.

Comments

This article was originally published in Water Resources Research, volume 61, in 2025. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR037929

Recommended Citation

Huang, J., Sehgal, V., Alvarez, L. V., Brocca, L., Cai, S., Cheng, R., et al. (2025). Remotely sensed high-resolution soil moisture and evapotranspiration: Bridging the gap between science and society. Water Resources Research, 61, e2024WR037929. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR037929

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.