Related news: CU-Boulder Researchers Map Texas Floods To Support Forecasting And Relief Efforts
July 4, 2007: The NOAA-CU Center for Environmental Technology recently partnered with NASA to produce a soil moisture map over much of the flood prone area of south Texas for use by the Texas Office of Emergency Management. The map was made during a flight of the NASA P-3 aircraft on July 3 and using the CET Polarimetric Scanning Radiometer. The effort entailed rapid turnaround of a PSR C-band soil moisture product, including calibration, georegistration, interference mitigation, SM retrieval, and GIS overlay. The data were sent to emergency managers in Texas this morning (within 24 hours of acquisition), where they are expected to be used in flood relief planning this week. Texas has been receiving record-breaking amounts of rain over the past two weeks, with more forecast to occur this week. Information on surface moisture is an important hydrological input to river stage forecasting and flood risk assessment.
Click on the thumbnail images below to see examples of the soil moisture map images.
CET Members Marian Klein, Eric McIntyre, Vladimir Leuski, Vladimir Irisov, and David Kraft contributed to the preparation of the PSR and made possible the timely delivery of these important data.
