The value of satellite remote sensing soil moisture data and the DISPATCH algorithm in irrigation fields

Fontanet, Mireia; Fernàndez-Garcia, Daniel; Ferrer, Francesc

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5889-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5889-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5889-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 11

Research article

|

14 Nov 2018

Research article |

| 14 Nov 2018

The value of satellite remote sensing soil moisture data and the DISPATCH algorithm in irrigation fields

Mireia Fontanet, Daniel Fernàndez-Garcia, and Francesc Ferrer

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Nov 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Apr 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'review', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 May 2018
- AC2: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #1', Mireia Fontanet, 16 Jul 2018
RC2: 'Comments on "The value of satellite remote sensing soil moisture data and the DISPATCH algorithm in irrigation fields"', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Jul 2018
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #2', Mireia Fontanet, 14 Jul 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (03 Aug 2018) by Micha Werner

AR by Mireia Fontanet on behalf of the Authors (15 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Sep 2018) by Micha Werner

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (09 Sep 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

GENERAL COMMENTS
The paper was significantly improved and I believe that the current version deserves to be published on Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. However, three general comments and some specific comments should be addressed to make the paper more clear and relevant (of course in my opinion).
I listed here the general comments:

1) A quantitative comparison between in situ measurements and DISPATCH soil moisture is easy to be performed and would add quantitative results to the paper. For instance, the correlation between the average of in situ observations and DISPATCH in the two investigated periods will quantify the difference in the performance of DISPATCH product.

2) The introduction should contain the recent studies that attempted in using satellite soil moisture for providing irrigation information. For instance, see the papers by Lawston et al. (2017, doi: 10.1002/2017GL075733), Brocca et al. (2018, doi: 10.1016/j.jag.2018.08.023), Zaussinger et al. (2018, doi: 10.5194/hess-2018-388) and references therein.

3) The obtained results might be not only related to the spatial resolution of LST and NDVI, but also simply to the low sensitivity of these two variables to irrigation application. They provide information at the surface and of vegetation conditions, which might be not sensitive to irrigation. I am not aware of studies that have shown the LST or NDVI variation in time are sensitive to irrigation. I suggest adding this option should be added in the discussion of the results.

I listed in the specific comments a number of corrections and changes that are needed to make the text more readable.

SPECIFIC COMMENTS (P: page, L: line or lines)
P1, L16: remove the bracket before “Normalized”
P1, L29: change “draught” with “drought”
P2, L1: change “exchange” with “exchanges”
P2, L14: remove “in a commercial field site”
P2, L17: change “true value” with “reference value”
P2, L23: change “from the fact that field data is typically scarce and provides” with “from the typical low number of in situ sensors that provide”
P3, L3: remove comma after “Sensing”. Why Remote Sensing in capital?
P3, L4: add “(or less)” after “5 cm”
P3, L3-14: The other satellite soil moisture products currently available should be mentioned, i.e., SMAP, ASCAT, AMSR2 and ESA CCI SM.
P3, L17: change “This data can be freely…web sites” with “data are freely available”
P3, L20: add a reference to the downscaling studies at the end of the sentence.
P3, L21: please check, I do not think the spatial resolution in the study by Chauhan is 25 km.
P3, L23-24: the sentence “The change in…resolution” should be revised as it is not clear.
P4, L12: The recent study by Bauer-Marschallinger et al. (2018, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2018.2858004) demonstrated the feasibility to obtain a soil moisture product operationally from Sentinel-1. I suggest adding this reference.
P4, L16: change “even if” with “only if”
P5, L12: change “sprinkle” with “sprinkler”
P5, L12: please specify the source of the soil texture information. Does it refer to one point, a spatial average of multiple measurements?
P5, L23: remove the point after “Figure 1”
P6, L10: change “resolution” with “accuracy” and specify how this number is obtained.
P8, L9: what is the meaning of “content”? Also later in the text (P10, L9). Please revise.
P8, L10: add a reference here. Always, when you cite results of previous studies, a reference should be added.
P8, L17: what is the meaning of “transpired”? Please revise.
P9, L13: remove “general”, also in the conclusions (P12, L1).
P9, L15: change “can slightly underestimate” with “slightly underestimates” (remove can).
P9, L22: remove “significant”.
P12, L8: change “can” with “might”.

RECOMMENDATION
On this basis, I found the topic of the paper very relevant, and I suggest a minor revision before the paper can be published on Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (02 Oct 2018) by Micha Werner

AR by Mireia Fontanet on behalf of the Authors (06 Oct 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (25 Oct 2018) by Micha Werner

AR by Mireia Fontanet on behalf of the Authors (01 Nov 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

One of the main objectives of remote sensing methodology is to downscale soil moisture to improve irrigation management. The DISPATCH algorithm is able to measure soil moisture at 1 km resolution using SMOS and MODIS data. In this work DISPATCH has been evaluated with soil moisture sensors, under heterogeneous conditions where local irrigation is applied. Results show that DISPATCH is not sensitive when local irrigation is applied even at low resolution.