Modeling Water and Heat Balance Components for the River Basin Using Remote Sensing Data on Underlying Surface Characteristics

E. L. Muzylev, A. B. Uspenskii, Z. P. Startseva, E. V. Volkova, and A. V. Kukharskii

The method of the AVHRR-3 (NOAA) radiometer measurement data subject processing is produced for the retrieval of underlying surface temperature and several vegetation characteristics under cloud-free conditions. A technology for deriving the values of these parameters from the MODIS (EOS/Terra and Aqua) radiometer data is developed. The estimation of the temperature and vegetation characteristics is carried out for the Seim River basin (Kursk region) with the catchment area of 7460 km2 for 2003–2005 vegetation seasons. Practical coincidence of estimations of AVHRR- and MODISderived temperatures, as well as the coincidence with ground observation results, is revealed. Statistics of these estimation errors is analyzed. Satellite-derived estimations of land surface temperature (LST) and vegetation characteristics are used for the calibration and verification of the developed model of the vertical heat and water transfer in the soil–vegetation–atmosphere system (SVAT). The model is intended for calculations of evapotranspiration, soil water and heat content, latent and sensible heat fluxes, and other water and heat balance components. The abilities to compute these parameters using the satellite estimations of the leaf area index and projective vegetation cover fraction as the model parameters and LST satellite estimations as the model input variable are investigated.