High-Resolution Mapping of Surface Soil Moisture with Hyperspectral Line-Scan Imaging.

Time-lapse hyperspectral imaging provides an exciting new avenue for high-resolution mapping of Darcy scale surface moisture redistribution processes with the potential for estimating soil hydraulic properties. In this preliminary study we employed a benchtop hyperspectral line-scan imaging system to generate high resolution surface reflectance maps during evaporation and moisture redistribution experiments. A recently developed physically-based model for near-surface soil moisture predictions from shortwave infrared reflectance was applied to generate time-lapse surface moisture distribution maps. The dynamic 2-D surface moisture information was used to estimate evaporation rates and hydraulic conductivity for source soils covering a wide textural range. Preliminary results will be presented and the prospective applicability of the proposed method will be discussed.