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Hyperspectral measurements of wet, dry and saline soils from the McMurdo Dry Valleys: soil moisture properties from remote sensing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2014

Joseph Levy ,
Anne Nolin ,
Andrew Fountain  and
James Head
Joseph Levy*
Affiliation:
University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences, Austin, TX 78758, USA
Anne Nolin
Affiliation:
College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
Andrew Fountain
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97210, USA
James Head
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Soil moisture is a spatially heterogeneous quantity in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica that exerts a large influence on the biological community and on the thermal state of Dry Valleys permafrost. The goal of this project was to determine whether hyperspectral remote sensing techniques could be used to determine soil moisture conditions in the Dry Valleys. We measured the spectral reflectance factors of wetted soil samples from the Dry Valleys under natural light conditions and related diagnostic spectral features to surface layer soil moisture content. Diagnostic water absorption features in the spectra at 1.4 µm and 1.9 µm were present in all samples, including samples doped with high concentrations of chloride salts. The depth of the 1.4 µm absorption is shown to increase linearly with increasing gravimetric water content. These results suggest that airborne hyperspectral imaging of the Dry Valleys could generate soil moisture maps of this environment over large spatial areas using non-invasive remote-sensing techniques.

Keywords

active layerpermafrostspectroscopyterrestrial environmentwater tracks
Type
Earth Sciences
Information
Antarctic Science , Volume 26 , Issue 5 , October 2014 , pp. 565 - 572
Copyright
© Antarctic Science Ltd 2014 

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